Keeping Hope for Christmas
by Pseudo Twili
Summary: Zelda wanted to make the coming Christmas something really special for her dearest friend and his reunited sister. Some things have changed for them, and lately she knew something had been bothering Link. However, a sudden disappearance throws all her plans into disarray. That Christmas wasn't to be anything like she thought it would be… 1940s AU, a sequel to Christmas After All.
1. Snowfall

_This is a continuation from my previous AU story,_ Christmas After All_. Since this is a sequel, I do refer to events in the first story, but I don't really tell them over again just for the sake of doing so. This story can, I suppose, be read on its own, but it will make much more sense if you've read the prequel._

_I dedicate this tale to my two sisters, who have made me smile when they've told me they liked the first story so much that they really enjoyed rereading it. This is my Christmas gift to them, and to you all you wonderful readers out there. It is my wish that you enjoy this continuing tale of Link and Zelda and how they find Christmas together. _

_The Legend of Zelda and the many characters herein still belong to Nintendo. I mean, if I owned them I wouldn't have to write _fan_ fiction, would I now? _

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**Keeping Hope for Christmas - by Pseudo Twili**

Chapter 1: Snowfall

The young man in a light brown topcoat took one glance into the traffic clogging the street before him, and then he darted between the slowly moving cars, earning honks and shouts from some of the drivers. He spared not even a backward glance as he made a leap to the sidewalk again, wove around the myriad other pedestrians and crossed the next street down, this time with the light.

At the next corner was an entrance to one of the city's parks. There, waiting, were two young ladies bundled up to their chins and topped with hats that were for once practical against the cold. The shorter of the two, with golden hair that was determined to escape its confines, spotted him first and made an excited little jump in her galoshes.

"There he is, Zelda!" she cried to her companion as she waved a blue-mittened hand at him.

The other young lady glimpsed him just a split second later, her own face blooming with the sweetest of smiles. She gestured to him as well, impatient for him to join them.

From under the shelter of the trees that made a leafless canopy over the park's entrance, both girls came out to greet him. Tiny flakes of snow drifted down all around them and melted shortly after. The sky above them, usually like dark velvet, was covered by clouds of snow, and the street lights were like dimmed stars.

"Ooh, you're finally here, Link! What took you so long?" the blonde girl demanded, shaking her finger at him. She was only slightly miffed at having to wait in the cold, though, and was beaming impishly as she teased him.

"Sorry, Aryll," he said, his expression slowly fading from a scowl to something else that wasn't quite a smile. "Have you been waiting long?" He spared a quick look for Zelda; her own expression was smilingly sympathetic.

"About fifteen minutes," his sister said. "And I got here first."

Zelda took his arm as the three of them passed through the wrought iron gate of the park. "Yes, I arrived just a few minutes before you did, Link. There were lots of people at the clinic today. Oh, but I must ask how did your day go? The store is getting busy again, isn't it?" she questioned, looking up at him.

Making a face that was just short of a grimace, he replied, "It's December. Everyone seems to think it's time for Christmas shopping before the Thanksgiving pie is eaten."

"I know what you mean," Zelda said with a little nod. "It seems to me that the decorations come out earlier each year and that in all the busyness, people forget what Christmas really means." The smile crept over her face again as she moved her arm slightly in the crook of Link's elbow. "Though I must admit that the bows and the holly and all the good cheer do make me feel the holiday spirit."

Aryll moved to Link's unoccupied side and took his other arm. "I'm really looking forward to this Christmas," she admitted, and her words held a much deeper meaning than what they seemed on the surface.

Her brother agreed not by tongue, but he squeezed her mittened hand. She glanced up at him and noted how his brow was furrowed, as if he was nervous about what the holiday would require of him. She gripped his hand right back.

"You know, I haven't been to the store yet since you told me about putting up the decorations," Zelda continued. "I must drop in again and say hello. Perhaps we'll give the boys' governess a half day and I'll bring them along." Her smile grew as her face took on a pensive look. "It won't be the same as last year though, what with you being manager of the sporting goods department now."

Aryll pursed her lips a bit. "You could have something more than that job at the department store if you wanted, Link. If you'd just—"

"No," he interjected, his voice rigid. He looked down at Zelda and then away. He was silent for several seconds while he seemed to be collecting something more than his breath. "No," he amended in a less severe tone. "Zelda and her father have done enough for me. I've told you this before, Aryll; I want to find my own path. Please don't ask me again."

The blonde girl's shoulders slumped a bit. "I'm sorry, big brother," she said quietly, reverting to the term of endearment she had used when they were children.

Zelda had remained completely silent during the siblings' exchange, which was a bit uncharacteristic for her. She had mentioned that very subject to him many times, that her father could secure for him a much more lucrative job, but each time he had refused, telling her the same thing. She thought it would be best for him, but she had finally realized she had been short-sighted in the matter because it wasn't what he wanted. He had asked her not to mention it again and she gave her promise.

As they walked, the snow fell thicker around them, cushioning the air and making them feel detached from the rest of the world. They came to the bridge that crossed a little pond in the park; they stopped in the center, the quiet tension between them like the still, dark water below them. The water had not yet frozen; its frigid depths reflected softly the seemingly distant lights of the city.

"I hope the ducks are somewhere warm," Zelda said as she put her gloved hands on the wooden railing and gazed downward. She was almost desperate to start up a thread of conversation again. "I can't see if any of them are brave enough to still be on the water."

Aryll exhaled a lengthy cloud of breath that disappeared into the falling snow. "It wasn't so cold in the little town where we used to live. The ocean was just a couple miles down the road and we went there often."

Though he still said nothing, Link's shoulders relaxed and he let his breaths come easier. He drew his fists out of the pockets of his coat and uncurled his fingers. He was not angry with his sister, rather he was disturbed with thoughts that came back from time to time to haunt him with his own inadequacy.

He'd come a long way since a year before when he'd first met Zelda. Her father had used his influence to reinstate him in his job at the department store right after Christmas, this time with a fair wage. He worked as diligently as ever, refusing to leave, even though he had no kind thoughts about the store's owner. Then, a month ago, when old man Deku retired from his position as floor manager for the sporting goods department, at a recommendation from the store's manager, Link had gotten his promotion.

After being reunited with his little sister, the two of them did not want to be separated any further. His one comfort was that she had been adopted by a good family a couple years after their grandmother died and she had been well-cared for as she grew up. Since she had been almost eighteen, her adoptive parents, who lived some fifty miles from Hyrule City, gave their blessing that she stay in the city and live with her brother. With Zelda's ready assistance, they found a suitable apartment that Link could still afford while Aryll finished high school. During the summer she'd found a part-time job at the public library, which made her all the more happy that she could help out with the rent and other expenses. And every few weekends or so she would drag her brother out to her adoptive parents' home for a visit. He grumbled about it, but as he came to know them better he acquired a respect and liking for the people who had raised his sister.

The cold began to creep into their bones as they stood at the bridge, the snow clinging, half-melted, to their heads and shoulders. With a little shake of her head, Zelda captured Link's arm again and the threesome resumed a brisk pace over the pathway of the park. The girls kept up the chatter, while Link let his chin sink into his collar and listened with one ear.

"Oh, I almost forgot to tell you about what happened at the clinic today," Zelda said. "A little boy and girl, twins I think, came in with their mother. While the mother went into the back for her examination, the twins decided they wanted to look out the window, but it was too high for them to reach the sill. Oh, but they were very resourceful! They pulled a couple of the waiting room chairs (which thankfully no one was sitting in!) and clambered right up. I think perhaps they wanted to see if it had started to snow yet, because I'd heard them asking their mother about it as they came in."

Her tone took on that quality by which Link always knew she was beaming in her very sweet way. Though he couldn't see her very well, his heart gave a little jump, as it always did whenever he glimpsed that smile gracing her lips. He began to pay more attention to what she said.

"With their faces pressed against the glass, they pointed out the window, naming the things they saw, or so I thought. They called out things like, hopping horse, stilty man, big lake water, bye-bye moon, cowboy, flying lady, big big tree… Oh and I just can't remember it all. I was at the reception desk where I heard everything they said. I was so puzzled! I did not think the street outside held most of the things they were seeing, but I went over to take a look anyway."

"Did you see a cowboy?" Aryll questioned mischievously.

Zelda chuckled prettily. "Not a one! All I could see were the people going by, the cars, the shops across the street. The twins must have known I was standing there because the things they saw got to be more and more elaborate. They saw green men twice as big as their daddy, big spiderwebs that caught people instead of flies, a trio of flying pigs and an elephant that spouted water a hundred feet into the air! You know, I wonder if they'd been to see a show… I know the circus isn't in town."

Aryll snorted back a laugh. "Kids have such imaginations, don't they?"

The young man made a sound in the back of his throat. "Hmph. Weren't you the one who pretended you were a princess working in disguise just the other night?"

Giving him a light slap on the arm, she retorted, "I was only passing the time while I made dinner for _you_, traitorous brother! If you don't want an exiled princess to serve you, you're welcome to do it all yourself." Then she tilted her head away, her nose in the air, as if she had been gravely offended.

He laughed, the sound tumbling from his throat and lifting to the skies above like the wings of a bird. Snowflakes landed on his face and in his open mouth but he did not mind. Zelda grasped Aryll's arm and squeezed. She whispered a quiet thank you and after a moment she let out a few giggles as well.

"I didn't mean it like that, Aryll," he said when he had caught his breath. "Though, honestly, you shouldn't serve your dinner to any king that happened along. I don't think he could appreciate it as I do."

"Ooh, you…you teaser!" she cried, and probably would have given him another playful slap if Zelda wasn't between them. She grinned to herself in the darkness, knowing it would go unnoticed by her two companions.

"Link," Zelda began slowly as she glanced up at the faint silhouette that held his face. "I'm…so glad to hear you laugh. I like it when you do."

The young man's step faltered as if he'd caught his foot on a crack; however, the pathway beneath them was as smooth as when it had been made. He spluttered a couple of syllables and Zelda could sense that he was using his free hand to fiddle with the lapels of his topcoat.

"I guess I'm not really the laughing sort," he muttered at last.

"And things really did go well at the store today?" she dared to press further, having realized that they'd skipped over that part of her earlier inquiry.

"There weren't any damaged displays, if that's what you mean," he replied. "No missing canoe paddles or errant fishing lines either."

Her lips curved up at the corners, despite her attempts to remain completely serious. On only one other occasion, a few months back, she had visited him in the sporting goods department and brought her little brothers with her. In the course of their visit, Joel and Zill fought over the use of a fishing pole, getting the line tangled around a hapless customer who happened to be there, upset a shelf of specialty shoes while they tried to reach for some baseball equipment, and hid a canoe paddle that had been instrumental in breaking one of the glass display cases. Fortunately for the boys and their mortified sister, Link was an expert in untangling fishing lines and the other equipment was easily enough to put to rights again. Of course Zelda insisted on paying for the broken glass, but the paddle was missing for weeks afterward, until a cleaning lady found it in a supply closet.

Pushing her brothers out of her mind, she quelled the mirth that rose within her and continued, trying to put her question as delicately as possible. "Are you… Uhm, this isn't about that other matter, but… Are you happy working there still, Link?" Feeling his arm tense, she hastened to add, "I promise this isn't about another job. I just want what's best for you."

Link let a short breath escape him and he pressed his lips together firmly. In next few seconds the only sounds were of the far-off traffic, and the slight crunch of their shoes in the snow. The nearly infinitesimal sound of the white flakes drifting softly to the ground was lost to the other two.

"As happy as anyone can be in that place," was his mumbled response, his tone anything but happy.

"Your loyalty is commendable. I don't think I would want to keep working there if I'd endured what you have," Zelda confided quietly. She pulled a little closer to him, as if it could save them both from memories of a harder time.

"It isn't like that," he said, and paused. Both girls could tell that he seemed to be making a decision. He sighed. "I wouldn't give a wooden rupee for Rupin or his store."

"So then why do you stay?" Aryll queried quietly. She knew her brother well enough that he usually cracked under the persistent questioning of a female close to his heart.

Link clenched his fists and then loosened them. Biting at his lip, he half buried his chin in his coat collar again. "It was the manager of the store, Mr. Shad, who hired me."

"When you were…fifteen, was it?" prodded Zelda.

He gave a minute shake of his head. "You've forgotten, haven't you? I was fifteen when I first came to the city, sixteen by the time I got that job. There were many others applying for the same position, most with a better background or skills than I had; I didn't think I had a chance."

"But he hired you over all the others," Zelda whispered with sudden realization.

He nodded, an action that was lost to the darkness except that his friend felt it and knew. He closed his mouth to prevent a sound from escaping and betraying him. Zelda's heart gave a little throb and tears prickle at her eyes; she fished out her handkerchief and dabbed at them surreptitiously before they could spoil her makeup. She tried to pretend it was the cold air that made her nose run so. Link noticed none of what she did, but Aryll knew it all.

"Mr. Shad saw a hungry, desperate boy," he continued, slowly and carefully, "And he gave me a chance, a chance few others would have taken. 'I'm counting on you to do good work here,' he told me. I vowed not to disappoint him."

"Oh, Link…" murmured Zelda, her tone woeful. "I'm so sorry I ever tried to make you give up your job. I was silly and I did not understand."

"It isn't your fault," he returned simply. He cleared his throat, his next words sounding a bit gruff. "But enough about that. What about your job? Are you happy?"

She glimpsed what he was trying to do the moment he said it. He was embarrassed at having exposed one of the more tender parts of his soul and naturally was trying to steer away from it. She was sure he also wanted to get her mind on something else, thereby sparing her further sadness even if it was on his behalf. Whipping up her head, she caught a quick glimpse at his face. Was it possible that a combination of the snow and the city lights made it just slightly easier to see?

"Oh, I do!" she replied. "You know, it's hardly more than volunteer work, though; I am paid rather little but that doesn't really matter. Some days are trying, but those are few and far between. I've picked up a few nursing skills after the months I've been there, too. I find it all to be very rewarding to be useful, to do something with my time. I think the goddesses must have sent it to me at just the time I needed it. Isn't it just wonderful how things work themselves out?"

After having a terrific turnover in governesses for their two exasperatingly mischievous boys, Zelda's parents had at last found one who could manage Joel and Zill and not be put off by their pranks. A petite young lady with the palest skin imaginable arrived from the Good Fairy Agency, introduced herself as Navi, and requested firmly to be introduced to her changes. She was small and sweet looking, but her appearance was deceptive; she was relentless when they misbehaved and was as unyielding to the boys' shenanigans as a great tree to the wind. Under her tutelage, they were somewhat tamed. Because she didn't have to constantly spare her mother by helping out with her brothers, Zelda had suddenly found herself with a lot of time on her hands. Zill and Joel, however, still loved it when their sister took them out for a movie, to the park, to the department store, or to visit Link and his sister.

"Oh, that's enough talking shop from you two," Aryll declared with an impatient swing of her left arm. "I'm not going to tell about my boring day at the library. I'm hungry! What do you say we get something to eat, hm?"

"I'm all for that," Link said, and he picked up his pace.

Zelda pulled back slightly. "Wait! We haven't seen the Christmas tree here yet! The boys made me promise to see if it was lit up yet. We must take a look before we leave."

"All right," Aryll agreed. "Is it near? We've been winding all around on these paths and I'm lost."

"Mm-hm, it should be right around here. I came by yesterday and they'd put the tree up, but no decorations, so I'm sure it's finished by now."

"It's around these trees," the young man interjected. His keen mind had kept track of where they'd been every moment, as if he had a compass in his head.

True enough, when they emerged from a pathway lined thickly with trees and shrubs, the famous Christmas tree of Oracle Park came into view. The threesome made the appropriate awed expressions, or a little exclamation of delight, as they beheld the tree. It rose to an approximate twenty-five feet from the ground, which was less than half of height of the great, live tree that stood in the middle of the Goddess' Square downtown. What made the one in the park special was the way it was all but enclosed by the trees, brush and other things which were now bare and seemingly void of life. Festooned with tinsel and a great multitude of colored lights and topped by a magnificent star that almost rivaled those in the heavens, this Christmas tree seemed to shimmer before them. The falling snow, which had become thicker, was now sticking to the surfaces on which it landed, except the tree and a small space around it.

"Ooh, wow…" Aryll breathed, her eyes wide and her mouth open too much for her to smile, as she hadn't the privilege of seeing it before. "It's so beautiful!"

"It is isn't it? I don't know how, but I think it's prettier every year," Zelda said with a happy little sigh. "Oh, Link, do you remember when we first walked through the park together, after Joel and Zill ran into you? We looked at the tree then too, and how the boys loved it when you put them on your shoulders! Zill touched one of the lights and we later found out that he singed his mitten; Joel fell off a bench into a bush and got a face full of snow. I never forget that day!"

"I remember," Link replied, though he sounded considerably less jubilant about the recollection than did his friend. It wasn't as if he refused to look back on that very trying time in his life, but it was still a bit difficult for him to think about it. However, wedged between the bad memories were better ones, mostly filled with Zelda's many words and comely smile.

Many other citizens of the great city had come to gaze upon the tree as well. Young and old alike stood admiring the tree, a few bored children ran in circles and around any obstacles in their way, and a pair of sweethearts shared one of the benches with eyes on each other instead of the tree. The area was thinning out, however, as the people's thoughts were turning to dinner and of somewhere warmer and out of the snow.

Zelda gazed upon the tree for a few more moments before they too departed. The lights reflected brightly in her eyes, even as visions of all her hopes and plans of the Christmas to come swirled and danced in her head.

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_I first had this idea last December and was working on it for a while then and on into January. It wasn't anywhere near being done, especially for me to publish it during the actual Christmas season, plus I had another project I felt I needed to work on. So this story took a back burner for a while. I worked on it a little, but I had other things I'd committed myself to. But I was determined to have it ready for this Christmas. Somehow, I kept pecking away at it through a couple of crazy months. I certainly wouldn't have been able to do it without some special help. Thus, it is my hope that you enjoy this fruit of my labors. _

_This story is very nearly finished. In the meantime, I will update regularly with new chapters. I expect to have the whole thing completed well before the new year, and I will continue publishing it in January._

_Have you ever heard the expression "not worth a plug (or plugged) nickel"? It means that something is worthless, or at least of no worth to the one who is saying it. It originated due to people taking the valuable center (plug) of a nickel, rendering it worthless. I was going to use the expression in this chapter, but I quickly realized that this was Hyrule I was writing about, with a completely different currency. So after a little bit of thinking, I decided on a wooden rupee instead of a plug nickel. Do you think it fits, or not?_

_Another thought that occurred to me at about this time: how would rupoors even work in a realistic Zelda setting? How in the world do you get negative money? XD_

_In_ Christmas After All_, the four characters I had listed were Link, Zelda, Zill and Joel. For this story, I added Aryll to the character list and then there wasn't room anymore for both of the naughty boys. But don't worry!_ _They will certainly be in this story as well! I couldn't leave out the little miscreants any more than I could leave out Link's reunited sister._

_Buckle your safety belts and hang on tight! This is going to be _quite_ a ride._

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12-20-2019 ~ Published (3,820 words)


	2. On the Ice

**Keeping Hope for Christmas - by Pseudo Twili**

Chapter 2: On the Ice

Zelda perched herself on the edge of the desk in her father's study and reached for the telephone. Her fingers had only just touched the receiver when she noticed a minute movement out of the corner of her eye. Turning swiftly, she saw an eye peeking at her from a crack in the door that she was sure she'd closed behind her. Shrugging, she picked up the phone and dragged it nearer as she lifted the receiver. Another motion distracted her and again she whirled her head toward the door; this time she was sure she saw two eyes, one considerably above the other, pressed close to the crack which had grown slightly.

"Joel, Zill, I told you to wait upstairs!" she called out, the irritation barely contained in her tone.

She could hear a scrabbling noise and some loud whispers from the other side of the door, and then the sound of two pairs of feet pounding back up the hall. With a sigh and a shake of her head, she rolled her eyes. Those two were as impatient and insatiable as newly hatched birds! All she wanted to do was make a phone call in peace, for goodness sake!

"Number please," came the operator's voice near her ear.

"Evergreen, one nine eight six," Zelda replied.

While the operator dialed, she slipped down into her father's chair, the size of which made her feel a bit like a little girl again, and she twirled the telephone cord around her fingers. She turned her head toward the door, suddenly suspicious that the boys were lurking again, but she neither saw nor heard anything.

Several seconds ticked by, never to be seen again, and then a woman's voice came over the line. "Hello?"

"May I speak to Aryll Galen, please?"

She heard the superintendent's wife shout for the requested tenant, there were a few muffled, distant sounds, and someone else spoke. "Hello?"

"Good morning, Aryll! Is Link up yet?"

"Oh, hi Zelda! Um, I think I heard some noise from his room a minute ago." She chuckled into the phone. "I bet he smelled the bacon and eggs I cooked for breakfast. But you didn't call just to ask me that, did you?"

Zelda smiled to herself. "Oh no, not at all. You see, today being Sunday, Navi has a day off and I don't have the clinic, so I promised the boys I would take them out somewhere. I promised them last week, but because they caught a cold last Saturday Mother forbade them from going out. They've been pestering me about it every moment since then. I thought you and Link might like to join us. How does ice skating at Malo Plaza sound to you?"

"Swell! I used to skate on the pond every winter in the town I grew up in. In fact, I think I still have my skates packed away somewhere. When and where do you want to meet?"

"One o'clock, at—"

She stopped suddenly, having heard a hissed whisper and noticed from the corner of her eye that the door moved just a fraction of an inch. She turned her back to the noises and the naughty little fellows to whom they belonged, cupped her hand over the receiver and spoke in a hushed tone.

"…At the plaza. Aryll, please play along with me," she said, and lowered her hand. "Othersbray at the oorday."

"Huh?" The other young lady was silently puzzled for a moment before she caught on. "Oh. Ohh! So they're listening in, are they? The little rascals!"

Raising her voice, Zelda turned so that her profile was visible to the crack in the door. She wanted to smile with the glee she felt in her attempt to outsmart her brothers, but she forced her mouth into the beginnings of a frown. "What's that? You say you and Link can't come? Oh, that _is_ too bad!"

"That's right, we can't come, and we'll meet you at Malo Plaza at one," Aryll giggled. "See you then, Zellie!"

"I'm sorry about that. Maybe another time," she said, too loudly. Lowering her voice, she added, "Eesay you aterlay. Yebay, Aryll."

She replaced the receiver, purposely avoiding looking in the direction of the door. With her face averted, she allowed herself a beaming smile, which only grew as she heard a slight scuffling sound outside the study. Then she rose from the chair, smoothed her skirt down, pushed back a bit of hair that had fallen forward, and advanced toward the door. No one was on the other side, just as she expected. However, as she approached the great stairway leading up to the second floor, two pairs of eyes peeked out at her from behind the bannisters.

"What's the Malo Plaza?" Zill demanded, popping up from his crouched position.

"Are Link and Aryll coming, huh, Zellie?" Joel asked, pressing his hands against the bannisters as he eyed her.

"Can I take my pistols? Can I?"

"What's 'oorday'?"

But Zelda only shook her head. As she reached the stairs she pulled Joel to his feet and used her handkerchief on Zill's nose. "Little boys who eavesdrop behind doors don't get to ask questions. Come on, up you go!"

At her prodding, the boys mounted the stairs, protesting vociferously and begging their sister to give in. She, however, remained steadfast in her resolve, and they found it frightfully annoying that she kept smiling in what seemed to them to be a very vindictive way.

"Joel, watch out!" she cried suddenly, the smile being replaced by a look of concern.

The warning came too late for the distracted boy to realize that he was not looking where he was going; he backed right into Navi. The governess, adorned in her best coat and hat and on her way out, caught the boy and saved them both from an unfortunate tumble.

"Oh, Joel," Zelda sighed; she had the urge to shake her brother until his teeth rattled. "Apologize to Navi."

"…Sorry," he muttered.

Navi patted her coat and skirt, checking to see that nothing was damaged. She fixed her mesmerizing, violet-eyed gaze on the boy. "We will talk about this when I am back," she said.

Joel gulped. "Y-yes, ma'am." Then he and his brother slipped past and made a beeline for their room.

Zelda watched them go and turned back to the governess. "I'm sorry about that. They've been so excited about going out."

"I'm all right," Navi replied, her gaze softening. "It is very kind of you to take the time to spend with your brothers, Miss Zelda. If you don't mind my saying so, not many young women in your position would do that."

Zelda's lips parted, but she was for once at a loss for words.

"I'm sorry. I suppose it wasn't my place to say that." The governess inclined her head respectfully. "Good day to you, Miss Zelda."

Then she descended the stairs, leaving Zelda with her brow furrowed as she tried to figure out what she should think of Navi's observation.

Meanwhile, in a graystone apartment several miles away in another section of the city, Aryll, wearing an apron and with a spatula in her hand, hung up the hall phone. As she went back into her kitchen, mirth flowed softly across her tongue and past her lips. Returning to the pan she had left on the stove, she quickly removed the sizzling bacon therefrom and arranged it next to the eggs on the two plates she had set on the table.

Link entered the kitchen at that moment, his bathrobe put on carelessly over his pajamas, he having been summoned by the delectable smells of breakfast as a donkey could be led with a carrot. His ran his fingers through his hair, which needed something more like a lawnmower or garden shears than a comb and scissors.

"Morning, Aryll," he mumbled, stifling a yawn. "Were you talking to someone?"

"Mm-hm," she said. "Zelda called. She wants us to go ice skating with her and the boys."

The siblings skirted around each other in the small kitchen; he went to the little table that barely fit the two of them, and she opened the refrigerator to get the milk. As he seated himself, he stared down at the plate of eggs, bacon, and toast made from day-old bread.

"Eggs _and_ bacon?" he questioned almost accusingly, looking up at her with furrowing brow.

"Do you not like them?" she asked, her eyebrows crinkling with a bit of worry as she set the milk bottle on the table and poured the hot water for their tea. "I can put them in the refrigerator if you don't want them now."

"Bacon is expensive, Aryll," he grumbled. "What does it cost now? Seven rupees a pound?"

"The price has gone down. I bought this for six," she said, a small, triumphant smile coming over her face. She couldn't let the opportunity to correct such a grave mistake go by, but she didn't want to seem like she was gloating either. "Anyway, it's Sunday. I thought you might like something a little special. I'd be glad to take the bacon myself if you don't want it. I like it."

She reached for his plate, as if she was intending to move his two slices of bacon to join hers, but Link pulled his plate back toward himself. He picked up one of the delectable slices of meat with his fingers and bit off the end. Then he spread jam on his toast and took up his fork to start on the fried eggs. Aryll set the kettle back on the stove and then squeezed into her chair, wedged between the counter and table, and tucked into her own breakfast.

The apartment in which the two siblings made their home had been advertised as a having three rooms plus bath. It was the first apartment of the many they'd seen that really suited Aryll; she liked the fact that it was located on a corner and therefore had more windows to let the daylight in. It had one bedroom, a bathroom, kitchen, and an outer room which the superintendent had called a sitting room to make it sound more impressive. A tiny hall separated the rooms from each other, and there were two doors that led out to the building's hallway. The siblings agreed to rent the apartment despite its noisy plumbing and floors that creaked loud enough in spots to wake the dead; anything larger would have been too much of a strain on the pocketbook.

Their options for furniture were limited to the barest essentials at first, but over the next several months they managed to find a few second-hand pieces here and there that Aryll declared added nicely to their little domicile. They transformed the so-called sitting room into a second bedroom, which Link occupied, sleeping on a fold-out bed. She was a little worried though, because their apartment wasn't quite as nice as she had hoped; Link had put an arm around his sad sister and told her it was perfect because she was there.

The young man polished off his toast and took another swallow of his milk-laced tea. "So we're supposed to go skating, huh?"

"Yes, at Malo Plaza. Oh, and that reminds me! I need to look in that trunk of mine we had stored in the basement to find my old ice skates. I haven't used them in a couple of years or so, but they should still fit."

"Mmph," he said through a mouthful of egg.

She took a bite of her bacon and wiped her mouth with her napkin. "Do you have skates, Link? Oh, dear… I hadn't thought of that before. Perhaps we can borrow a pair from someone…" Her fingers curled tighter around her utensils and her face scrunched as she tried to figure out the problem.

Her brother shook his head. "No need. I have them."

Aryll brought her eyes suddenly to rest on him. "You do? Oh…" she murmured and took another bite of her toast. "Where did you get them? And why didn't you tell me?"

"I work in the sporting goods department, remember? Zelda mentioned skating a couple weeks ago when we saw that they were going to freeze the plaza."

He did not, however, mention that the skates now in his possession were a pair with broken laces and deep scuffs that a customer had returned after using them for a few hours; he'd subsequently bought them for considerably less than the usual price. Nor did he speak about the fact that he hadn't been on ice since he was all of nine years old. The little kidney-shaped pond just outside their little town hadn't usually frozen over, but that one winter had been especially cold and their grandmother had taken them for some improvised fun.

When the big clock above the plaza struck one, Link and Aryll were already waiting, two pairs of skates hanging over his shoulders and the snow dusting his fedora and her cute stocking cap. Five minutes later, Zelda came hurrying up, one brother's hand clenched in each of hers, even while they tried to wriggle free. The boys took one look at the other two siblings and they turned back on their sister, their faces already red from the cold.

"You said they weren't coming!" cried Joel in accusing tones.

"Yeah!" Zill chimed in a split second later. "You said they weren't! You lied, Zellie!"

The young lady would have folded her arms if her hands were free. "Little boys who listen behind doors can expect to hear the wrong things," she said, trying to keep her lips from twisting upward.

The brothers each made a face at their sister, though neither of them had a solid argument to stand on. Aryll hid her own smile behind her gloved hand but Link didn't bother masking a somewhat sardonic grin that cracked his lips.

"Serves you right," he muttered, but without malice.

As they all moved down the few steps to the plaza, the two girls took in each other's appearance, exchanging pleased little exclamations and compliments. Aryll was cozy in her powder-blue coat, white scarf and blue woolen skirt. Zelda's plum jacket was lined thickly at the collar and lapels with fur, her dress a matching color; her hair was mostly covered by an expensive tam that had come from Madame Couture's.

Shrugging off a bit of wetness that found its way to his neck, Link grumbled, "If we're going to skate then let's skate."

Still giggling, the girls sat down on a bench and began to put on their ice skates. Joel and Zill, too impatient to wait for that tedious process, began to slip and slide on the ice, an adventure which rapidly ended in a tumble.

"Zill, Joel, get back over here!" their sister commanded, looking up from the laces of her skates.

The boys scrambled to their feet and did their best to slide in the other direction. Several annoyed shouts followed them as they bumped into other skaters and finally ended up sprawling on the ice again.

"I'll get them," Link volunteered, having donned his skates with distinct celerity.

He wobbled out onto the ice, seeming to find his balance after a few seconds. His movements were still a bit unsure, but he managed to overtake the naughty boys with little trouble. Hauling them up, he shook them each in turn, scolded them soundly and then dragged them back toward their sister. No matter how much they struggled, they could not break from his fearsome grip on their upper arms.

Zelda beheld them, her soft features turned down in a disappointed frown. "I've a good mind to take you two back home. That was an irresponsible thing to do! You could have been hurt, or caused someone else to be hurt!"

"We're sorry! Zellie, no! Don't take us back!" the boys wailed in unison.

As Link released them, they fell to their knees before her, pleading with words, pitiful expressions, and even a few tears. No matter how hard she tried, she could not keep her heart from melting a bit as she beheld their miserable faces, and she well knew how mischievous her brothers could be. Her lips moved slightly, but she purposely held her pronouncement back for a few seconds.

"Very well, I shall give you one more chance," she said at last, keeping her expression as stern as possible. "Now sit down and put your skates on."

The boys obeyed, and when their half-hearted wrestling with said ice skates proved to be largely ineffective, both young ladies bent down to help. Even Link lent a hand, tying up the laces on Zill's left boot. When the boy made a ridiculous face at him, he returned with one still more gruesome. Zill, with half-dried tears at the corners of his eyes and a face that had been scrunched up in frustration, laughed freely.

Once they were all on the ice, Zelda did her best to keep her brothers from running into everyone and from constantly sprawling themselves on the frigid surface. She tried to teach them a bit about keeping their balance and how to move their feet so as to glide effortlessly across the ice; most of her words went in one ear and out the other, but the boys figured some of it out on their own.

The girls were quite at ease, gliding with all the grace of some years of winter skating behind them. Link, however, wore a slight scowl as he sometimes tripped and fell over himself as he tried to recall the skills he'd learned over a decade ago from his grandmother. Zelda took his arm, telling him she could skate better, surer, with a partner at her side; he both saw and felt her movements and mimicked them. Gradually his tension dissolved and he found himself enjoying the activity.

Meanwhile, Joel and Zill each grasped one of Aryll's hands, having declared that they were escorting her around. If anything, she was doing a remarkable job at keeping them from trouble and she beamed brightly the whole time. Seeing their sister skating so well with the young man whom they admired greatly, they thought the grass was greener on her side of the fence.

"I want to skate with Link!" Zill cried.

"No, I want to!" his brother echoed, trying to push ahead of his brother. They abandoned Aryll and raced for Link.

He was forced to drop Zelda's arm and catch the boys with both hands so as to avoid an impact. "You two never learn, do you?" he groused as he glared down at them, but his tone only slightly annoyed.

While he grasped the boys' hands and started skating between them; the mirth never left the girls' faces as they moved slowly behind the boys. Link quickly found that the little fellows were like a weight on both sides, ready to pull him into an embarrassing fumble if he even began to lose his balance. The last thing he wanted to do was to fall while in full view of both young ladies.

"Time to try something else," he told the boys.

Taking Joel's hands in his, he spun in a tight circle, letting centrifugal force do the rest. Taken by surprise, Joel hollered at first, but finding how much fun it was to barely skim the surface of the ice as he was, his shouts became ones of glee. Zill clamored for his turn and received it a minute later, shrieking louder than his brother had. They repeated this process several times, until Link declared himself too dizzy to go on. While he caught his breath and righted his senses, the brothers attempted to try the spin on their own.

"Look out!" came Zelda's voice from behind.

Through the noise that issued from their mouths, the boys hardly heard her; they collided sideways into a petite girl in a green coat and matching tam. Link reached them first and all but yanked the troublemakers up and off the girl. Joel held his elbow and Zill's nose had a trickle of blood issuing forth, but they were none the worse off for wear.

Link went down on one knee as he reached for the girl. "Are you all right?" he asked, his brows resting right over his eyes and his mouth a worried frown. As he gently helped her to her feet, he thought she looked familiar.

"I think so," she replied quietly, and reached down to brush the snow from the skirt of her dark red dress. Then she gazed straight into his eyes, her own blue ones growing wide. "Santa?"

"Are you sure you're all right?" he questioned again, not comprehending her meaning.

Her hand, gloved in a deep crimson, searched for and found his. All the while she stared into his eyes, her little face slowly blooming with the sweetest and shiest of smiles. "It's you, I know it is, Santa! I didn't know what you looked like before, but I recognize your eyes. They're blue, just like the summer sky."

His mouth creased into a deeper line as his mind reached for something just a hair's breadth from its grasp. The girl saw his confusion and her smile dimmed a bit.

"Don't you remember me, Santa?"

"You're… Why you're that little girl!" he cried, and the furrows vanished from his forehead. He placed his other hand on her arm, taking in her appearance as one would recall a friend from a dream. "Saria, isn't it?"

"Yes, oh yes! You do remember!"

With that soft exclamation, she threw her arms around his neck in a way that he recalled clearly now. The action nearly upset him and he put one hand on the ice to steady himself. When she pulled away, her eyes were moist with joy, her whole face alight with it.

"Do you remember what you told me then?" she said, pressing him with her words and her hand. "It came true. It really did! I have a family now!"

So that explained her new winter clothes and a dress that didn't show quite so much of her skinny legs! She was still a bit thin and her cheeks hadn't completely filled in yet, but the tired, love-starved look was gone from her eyes. He was sure that had she not been tied to the mortal plane, she would have floated to the heavens on the bliss that was hers.

"Saria, that's wonderful! I am very glad for you."

Pulling at his hand, she lifted her eyes to his again. "What's your real name, Santa?"

That elicited a small smile from the young man and he returned the squeeze of her fingers. "What, you don't want to keep calling me Santa?"

She giggled. "Oh, I think I might. But I want to know what everyone else calls you too."

"Link," he said.

He bopped the tip of her little nose with his finger and she wrinkled it in return. He raised his eyes as a man and woman came up behind her; he noticed the tender way in which they beheld Saria, their expressions becoming more guarded when they saw him. He rose to his feet, almost having forgotten that he was wearing skates, and though he tried to loose the young girl's grip on his fingers, she would not let go of his.

"There you are, Saria!"

"You shouldn't skate so fast, sweetie. Your mother and I can't keep up."

"Mummy, Daddy!" she said, beaming at the redheaded lady and dark-haired man. "This is Santa! He was very nice to me before… you know, before you found me." Only then did she leave Link and go to her adoptive mother's side.

"Pleased you meet you, sir," said the gentleman, extending his hand. He introduced both himself and his wife and added, "We own and operate the Stock Pot Inn and Restaurant."

Link returned his greeting and his handshake. "I'm sorry my little friends crashed into your daughter. I will be sure it does not happen again, to her or anyone else."

The man looked down at Saria, over whom his wife was fussing.

"Are you all right, sweetie?" the lady fretted. "You're not hurt?"

"Yes, Mummy, I'm okay. I've fallen on the ice before." Whether the young girl realized it or not, she might have otherwise been upset over the little accident, but she was too glad to see a familiar face to think of a smarting knee or bruised elbow.

"No harm done, I'd say," her father said, turning back to Link. "And I think it best if we keep moving before my feet turn into chunks of ice. Come to our place anytime. My wife cooks up a mean meal." He had a gleam in his eye as he said it and Link wasn't sure what it meant.

As Link watched them glide off, all he could think to say was, "Thank you." He lifted his hand as Saria turned back and waved to him.

During the whole exchange, Zelda and his sister watched him. Neither of them knew the story of the young girl or of how he came to know her, but they could easily see the happenstance meeting had affected him. He was quieter than usual after he joined them again; that in and of itself was not so strange, except that he hardly acknowledged what anyone else said to him. The girls reached an understanding, simply by giving each other a particular look and a nod; they let Link lag behind them while they each took charge of one of the young miscreants. Zill and Joel protested at being held by the hand, but Zelda interrupted their complaints with a reminder that she would take them right home if they did not cooperate.

They skated for a while longer, until they were getting a bit frosty at the edges. Darkness seemed to be coming earlier than usual because of the clouds, so they took an Epona cab back to Zelda's home. The boys raced each other to the kitchen, where they all raided the refrigerator, unhampered by the usual servants as most of them had the day off.

Link picked at the sandwich one of the girls placed before him and he excused himself soon after. Aryll sighed, knowing what that meant. He would be up until the wee hours of the morning, wearing out the center of the floor of his room. If she got up and spoke to him, he would apologize and pretend to go to bed, but minutes later would resume his restless pacing. Something was bothering him and she hadn't yet convinced him to confide in her.

* * *

_Did you pay attention to the number Zelda gave the operator? It is, of course, Link's phone number (or rather the number to his apartment building) and is significant as such. That is all._

_You've probably heard of pig latin, right? That's what Zelda used to help throw off her little brothers. You take a word and move the first letter to the end, then ad "ay". That's how it generally goes anyway, though you don't move the first letter of a word if it begins with a vowel. _

_Aystay unedtay orfay the extnay apterchay. _

* * *

12-22-2019 ~ Published (4,485 words)


	3. Uncertain

**Keeping Hope for Christmas - by Pseudo Twili**

Chapter 3: Uncertain

Zelda flew up the stairs of the graystone building, her hair bobbing mightily with every step. She rapped smartly on the kitchen door, a smile playing on her face. Waiting for a moment, she heard a step from within, and she parted her lips ever so slightly, ready to burst out with the words that crowded over her tongue.

The door came open with a yank and she temporarily forgot what she wanted to say. Before her stood Link, in his shirtsleeves and suspenders, with one of Aryll's aprons hanging in lopsided fashion about his waist. She looked him over quickly, choking down the urge to laugh as she again met his gaze.

"Oh, it's you, Link. I'm sorry, I was, uhm…expecting Aryll."

"She'll be here soon I think. Err… I guess you should come in."

He noticed her taking in his appearance and, glancing downward, he scowled. He pulled mightily at the white apron, which was fortunately one of Aryll's simpler ones, without flowers or excess ruffles, but he only succeeded in knotting its strings. Wadding it up and twisting it to the side, he stepped back so Zelda could enter. While he wrestled with the apron, she mostly averted her gaze, though she was curious and watched him from the corner of her eye. She knew better than to offer to help.

"Um, Aryll told me at breakfast she had some shopping to do. She should be back soon," he said rather absently as he fumbled with the knot.

"I don't mind waiting for her, if you've no objection. I'm on my lunch break so I came right over here."

"That's…fine," he replied, at last attaining victory over the troublesome knot. Crumpling the apron, he hurled it into a far corner.

Zelda settled into one of the chairs and pulled off her gloves. Hardly had she done so than her head flew up and she fixed her eyes on her friend, who was trying not to burn his fingers on some bread and meat he had sizzling in a skillet.

"Oh, but Link! Why are you here this time of day?" she queried, her eyebrows tilting in worried fashion.

He snapped back his hand, put his index finger in his mouth and muttered something under his breath. He brushed his hands on his trousers, remembering too late that he'd rid himself of the apron. While the contents of the pan continued to sizzle unheeded, he proceeded to open nearly all the drawers and cupboards in that little kitchen as he searched for a towel and an implement of some kind; he could never remember where his sister kept everything.

Zelda removed her jacket and hung it on the back of her chair. She wanted desperately to help him, but was afraid he would resent her offer. Taking a breath, she approached him and said, "Can I do anything?"

"Here," he grumbled, handing her a fork instead of something larger that he still could not find.

While she saved the contents of the pan and lowered the heat, he finally found the towel he was searching for. He tucked it into the top of his trousers in lieu of the apron he'd discarded. Only then did he go to the sink and run cold water over his fingers. He moved to the refrigerator and pulled out cheese, tomatoes, mustard, pickles and lettuce. Taking a close look at the meat and bread in the pan, he nodded, turned off the gas and began slapping everything together on a couple of plates.

Zelda stepped back and resumed her seat, tracing her fingers absently over the tabletop. "I'm sorry if I've come at a bad time, Link."

"It's fine," he replied, spreading gobs of mustard on one slice of bread. He looked at her and gestured to his work. "Do you want one?"

"Mmm hmm, yes please! I came here straight from the clinic so I haven't had a chance for lunch yet. Oh, but was that supposed to be for Aryll?"

He shrugged. "I'll just make another one. Do you want onions?"

"Yes, please, but not too many."

Link rooted around in the refrigerator again, but came out empty-handed. "Looks like we're out of them."

"That's all right."

Zelda had to press her lips together to keep from bursting out with her question again. She knew he had heard her the first time and that he would answer if only she gave him more time. The waiting was a torture to her feminine curiosity, however; she started thinking about all the reasons there could possibly be for him to not be at his job. Was he fired? Did he quit? Was there another strike at the store? The first one was hopefully not true, the second one highly unlikely, and the third one simply had no evidence to back it up. Had something terrible happened at the store? She shook her head slightly, trying to get a grip on herself; she turned her gaze out the window in an attempt to find something else to think about.

He plunked two plates on the table, seated himself and picked up his large, misshapen sandwich that oozed mustard and tomato slices. Zelda looked hers over and smiled to herself even as she picked it up a bit into it gingerly. She knew he liked warm sandwiches with all the additions, but hadn't known before that he could make them himself. She didn't want to embarrass him further by telling him that his method of heating bread was not the way it was usually done. Lifting it to her mouth, she took a bite.

"Mm! This is good!"

Link finished chewing his first mouthful and paused before taking another. "There was a robbery at the store last night. That's why I'm home now."

She almost choked on the lettuce and tomato. "A robbery? Oh my goodness!" Setting her sandwich down, one hand flew to her mouth as she stared, wide-eyed at her friend. "Did they get away? How did it happen? Oh, but why does that mean you're here now? You didn't have anything to do with it!"

He shook his head as he wolfed down another bite. "It's like this: the thieves got in through the delivery entrance and knocked out the two night guards. They went through the sporting goods department, which is next to the main office where all the money is kept, you know."

Zelda nodded, her eyes fixed on him with a rather horrified interest. Her sandwich lay on her plate, while she clasped her hands tightly together and leaned forward.

"They got away with a few million rupees, the take for all of this week. Mr. Shad told me to send everyone from the department home for the morning, until the cops are finished getting fingerprints and whatever else they do.

"Oh, that's terrible!" she cried. "What of the night guards? Were they all right?"

"They were both taken to the hospital. One of them is pretty bad, or so I heard."

"That's just horrible! Oh, I can't imagine what their families must be going through! I hope the police catch those thieves. Do they know who did it?" She avoided making mention of Rupin, knowing how even the name was like a bitter taste in the mouth to Link.

"Not that I heard. But I expect we'll be seeing it all over the papers today."

She resumed eating her sandwich, all the while pressing him for more details. By the time he'd told her everything he knew and repeated a few of those things besides, he had consumed all of his sandwich and started making another.

"So why did you come rushing over here, anyway?" he questioned.

"I almost forgot about that," she said, swallowing thickly. She looked down at her plate and then up at him. "You see, there is a children's home near the clinic. I've been getting friendly with the nice lady to runs it, and she and her staff were hoping to put on a little Christmas play for the children. They'll just love it, I know! I told her I would help with it, and Mrs. Banji gave me one of the main parts. I… Well, I volunteered you too. I'm sorry; I know I should have asked you first but I didn't think you'd mind…"

She could see how his shoulders tensed, as well as his left hand which was holding the mustard-smeared knife. He glanced over at her, his eyebrows doing that dipping thing again and his mouth a concentrated frown. The knife dropped to the counter and he drew his fingers in on each other as he angled his shoulder away from her.

"Please don't be angry with me, Link. I know I was hasty, it's one of my greatest faults." She folded her hands miserably over the napkin on her lap, staring down at them. "But I couldn't think of anyone else I'd like to be on that stage with, performing for the children, and I blurted out your name. If… if you don't want to do it, I'll just tell them you couldn't, that I was presumptuous."

His shoulders rose and fell as he took a deep breath and let it go. He put both fists on the edge of the countertop, his head bent as he stared at but did not see the pattern on the edge of the china plate.

"I'm sorry," Zelda said again, and by this time she was twisting the napkin between her fingers.

"Stop apologizing. I'll… do it. I can't have you going back on your word," he said, his tone not too far from a growl. He turned his head toward her and their eyes met. "But next time, ask me first."

She agreed quickly, promising she would not repeat her folly. She let out a relieved breath of her own, trying to smooth the wrinkles out of the napkin again. She'd seen Link's face; he was angry and irritated, certainly, but his eyes, oh, his eyes! She would never forget how those blue eyes looked like they could weep all the tears in the world.

For the next few days, after both Link and Zelda finished with their respective jobs, they met at the Maple Home for Children, and there they rehearsed their parts for the play. It was about a wicked, ferocious, greedy monster who always took away the children's toys at Christmas, but whose heart was changed when he fell in love with the beautiful Miss Holly.

They'd already had a couple other men audition for the role of the monster, but the children, who were the ultimate judges on who should have the part, didn't like any of them enough to agree. However, when Link performed before them, growling, shouting and behaving in a very monster-like fashion, the children screamed, laughed, and squealed in mock terror. They decided immediately that he should be the antagonist of the play.

The boys of the home worked hard on a papier-mâché headpiece, to which Link added his talent. When trying it on, however, he said it made it hard to breathe and that it smelled. Meanwhile, Zelda and some of the girls who could sew had their fingers flying over a donated dress to be used for the occasion. They embroidered many snowflakes and added lace and gauzy stuff that looked like it would float at the slightest puff of air.

Zelda's enthusiasm and excitement only mounted as the first several days of December wore on. Even Link lost his frown when he looked up and saw how happy she was. One day she couldn't resist trying on her costume, though all its embellishments weren't yet finished. It was a red dress, with a full skirt that brushed the floor and hid her shoes, a trim bodice and sleeves which she and the girls were still working to make longer and fuller.

When the girls saw her in it, they oohed and awed at how pretty she looked, some of them wishing they could be in her place. When she twirled in front of Link, he glanced up at her from the paint he and the boys were putting on the monster's head. The dress was becoming on her, but it really couldn't compare to some of the expensive creations he'd seen her in before. Somehow, the fact that she wore it made the garment much prettier. She had let down her hair, the loose, nutty brown curls framing her face and falling on the back of her neck. But what Link thought was the prettiest thing of all was her sweet, beaming smile and the happy little crinkles around turquoise eyes that shone with all the enduring warmth of the sun.

"Well, what do you think?" she asked, cocking one eyebrow in his direction. She slowly turned once more, the gauzy material floating behind her like a cloak of mist.

He was staring, he knew, but he had much difficulty in breaking his gaze. If he were to tell the truth as it jumped into his mind, he would tell her how beautiful she was, how much like the heroine of the play she looked…and how much he wanted to say so much more. However, he told her none of those things and the scowl began tugging down at his mouth again. He refused to dwell on those thoughts and shoved them from his mind as one might push a heavy piece of furniture to barricade a door.

"It looks…nice," he said, and dipped his head to put more paint where it wasn't needed.

"Oh, you!" said Zelda, with a half-exasperated roll of her eyes. She was sure he had been about to say something else; her own face fell a bit when he seemed to have swallowed his tongue. She was not ready to try and probe the answers out of him, especially with the children all around them. "Isn't that just like a man to answer that way?!" she murmured to the girls as they headed back to the makeshift dressing room.

After practicing for the play, they headed to Zelda's house for a quiet meal with her family, for she had made it her mission to ask both Link and Aryll over as often as she thought she could get away with it. The other young lady had arrived about a half hour before and was entertaining the boys with many tangles of cat's cradles. With Link and Zelda's coming, they all sat down in the smaller dining room used for informal gatherings.

With their sister pleading their case for them, Zill and Joel were allowed to join everyone else for the meal. However, when the boys tried stabbing each other with their forks, their mother stared them down with a formidable look in her eye, which quelled all argument. She turned both rascals over to their governess, giving Navi instructions to put the troublemakers right to bed. The remainder of the meal was uneventful, even boringly so.

Afterward, Zelda seized Aryll's hand and brought her up to her room to show off a darling new hat she hadn't tried too hard to resist buying. They both tried it on, adding some things from Zelda's closet, and then they paraded in front of the mirror. She had a series of jaunty records playing in the machine, and many giggles burst from the girls as they sauntered to and fro like no models that had ever graced a runway.

"Doing this makes me feel like a little girl again," Zelda sighed happily as she set a hat down on her dressing table. "But I'll tell you a secret. I don't think I'll ever be too old to play dress up if I'm doing it with a close friend."

"So you think of me as a close friend, do you?"

"Of course. One of the best. I've had other good friends, but I always felt like we had to part too soon, because we moved around for Daddy's business. But you live right here in the city and I see you almost every day. I've never had a friend like you…" And then she paused as she realized that wasn't quite true. "…That is, among the girls I know."

Aryll had flopped on the bed, still wearing a silk robe she'd pulled from the closet. "Well, if we're giving out compliments, then I have to say I'm glad we met. And I'm doubly glad that you wouldn't let Link refuse your friendship when he needed it. I know last year was a rough time for him."

All the mirth and laughter faded from Zelda's face as quickly as clouds could cover the sun. She sat sideways on the chair before the dressing table, placed one hand on the back of it, and faced her friend.

"About Link… I know something's been eating him, but I never find the right moment to ask him about it. I'm afraid if I do I'll just push him further away. I just…can't!" She gnawed at her lip between sentences. "I can't bear for him to distance himself from me again."

"Ugh, that big goof!" the other girl burst out in a minor explosion. "He has his grumpy moods and I have a feeling there's something deep that he worries about, but he won't talk about it, the big idiot. Oh, I had no idea it was affecting you this much! I should slap him upside the head for being so stupid!"

A choked little laugh escaped Zelda's throat and she realized that tears were trickling down her cheeks. "He deserves it, too," she agreed with a little emotional gasp.

Aryll bounced up from the bed and moved over to put an arm around her friend. "You want something more from him, don't you, Zellie?" she asked softly as she rubbed the other girl's shoulder.

"Y-yes, I do." More tears flowed slowly and softly and she reached for a handkerchief to mop them up. "I care for him so much! Maybe I can hope for marriage eventually and everything that goes with it… Maybe someday… But I feel like every time we get a little closer something happens and he pushes me away. It's like an instinct, what you do when you touch a hot pot. Sometimes I have to wonder why I keep trying to get through to him. I'm so tired—tired of him taking me in a perpetual circle!"

Aryll continued to soothingly pat her friend's back and shoulder, to nod and empathize as only another female could. Zelda gave tongue to all the troubling thoughts and worries that had been accumulating of late, and it was a great relief to unburden herself to someone who understood so well.

In the meantime, Giselda had retired to her room early and Gustaf asked Link to join him in his study. The grey-haired gentleman's face had lost any semblance of joviality it had held during the meal. He bade his guest to take a seat; Link had a feeling like when he'd been called to the headmaster's office at the orphanage, and at that moment he could well have been eleven years old again. He was too nervous to sit very far back in the winged-back armchair.

"I'll get right to the point, Link," Gustaf said as soon as he had settled himself in the opposing chair. He clapped his hands over his knees and leaned forward slightly. "What are your intentions toward my daughter?"

Almost instinctively, the young man shrank back slightly, though he really would have preferred the chair to swallow him instead. His heart rate picked up and his fingers clenched at the upholstered arms. His gaze drifted from Gustaf's eyes to his mouth, unable to keep the intense gaze.

"Uh… Er… Wh-what do you mean, sir?"

"When you've been married as long as I have, you learn things about women. Sometimes they want something from us, but they think we're the ones who have to suggest it to them, so they go through great pains to make sure we get the idea. Zelda thinks the world of you, lad. I see it in her face whenever she looks at you." Gustaf cleared his throat. "That is, my wife pointed it out to me. She tells me that Zelda hopes for something more than friendship between you, and that is why I will have your answer. Do you care for my little girl in return?"

Before he turned his head away, Link's eyes registered panic. He hunched forward, his hands clenched together over the gap between his knees. His mind churned with thoughts of himself and Zelda, of what their future could be together…and what he feared would come of it. He pulled his lower lip into his mouth and bit down hard.

"Answer me!" Gustaf bade him, his tone growing severe. "Do you have any intention of asking for my daughter's hand?"

Link shook his head, his eyes still on the rug. "I…I can't," he mumbled.

The stout businessman's eyebrows tilted downward and he slammed his palm onto the arm of his chair. "You had me fooled all right! What vile idea are you entertaining? You harm my daughter and you really will know the meaning of hardship, that I promise you!"

"No, no sir!" he protested, meeting Gustaf's gaze again briefly before he let his face fall again. "I could never hurt her, sir, never. That's why… I can't marry her…!"

"Well, then I suppose you're only interested in the money you can get out of her, but don't want to tie yourself down, eh?! Admit it, boy, you're nothing more than a fortune hunter! I've seen your kind before and I'll not have you here!"

Link didn't even flinch and his eyes never left the same spot on the floor. "I wouldn't be…a good… She's too good… No, I couldn't…"

Gustaf sighed, knowing his ruse hadn't worked. The affected anger and indignation he'd summoned left him like the air in a punctured tire. The young man hadn't even heard his last words; in fact, Link was almost shaking as he clutched at his knees with a white-knuckled grip. The elder gentleman watched him for several moments and sighed again.

"I had hoped to welcome you into the family as my son-in-law. There's nothing in this world I would spare for my girl's happiness. We won't speak of this to Zelda for now. I don't want to ruin Christmas for her." He rose and put a hand on the young man's shoulder. "What's the problem, lad?"

Link stiffened and shook off the touch by practically jumping to his feet. He had to swallow twice before he could find his voice. "I…I have to go."

Showing himself abruptly out of Gustaf's study, Link fled from the house as if were a cave of ravenous bears. He wandered through the streets, eventually ending up at the gym where he sometimes went to work out in his spare time. Slugging a punching bag until it was hardly more battered than it had been before and he was utterly exhausted, he dragged himself to his apartment and fell into bed without even bothering to remove his topcoat.

The next day at the clinic, as Zelda exited the examination room she had just finished cleaning, the other girl who was at the front desk beckoned her over with a finger. Someone from the department store had called, leaving a message for her on Link's behalf. He was going to be at work later than usual and would not be able to meet her at the children's home. Zelda thanked the other young lady and a moment later let out a long sigh as she went on with her duties.

After a long bout of crying the night before, she didn't yet feel quite like her normal self again. A thought stole into her mind like an odorous friend dropping in unannounced: what if Link was avoiding her purposefully? Could he possibly know what she'd said to Aryll, though she had difficulty in imagining that the other girl would betray the confidence between them. Even so, as soon as she was finished with her work, she went to the switchboard and made her call.

"Not much passed between us this morning, at least on Link's part," Aryll told her. "He was in a particularly bad mood; whenever I asked him something he'd answer with a grunt. He slammed out of the apartment as soon as he'd gulped his breakfast. What happened to him last night anyway?"

"I don't know," replied Zelda. "But I do know what I'm going to do now. Bye, Aryll, and thank you."

She departed the clinic, trailing after the other staff, mostly doctors and nurses, for nearly everyone seemed in a hurry to get home, or go to the shops that were not yet closed. She stopped at the children's home to relay Link's message; she paused long enough to look over and encourage the children with the scenery and props which they were painting and decorating with whatever meager things they had or could beg. The girls had sewn more of the snowflakes on the red dress and wanted Zelda to try it on again, more because they wanted to admire her in it again than for any other reason, but the young lady turned them down.

Then she took a cab to Rupin's department store and trudged up and down the sidewalk. The sidewalks were slowly beginning to thin out as still she waited. Most of the passersby paid no more attention to her than they did to the tiny flakes of snow that fell from the sky. However, a policeman saw her and inquired if she was in any kind of trouble, but she just told him she was waiting for her friend to leave the store, even though it had long since closed. After waiting for more than an hour, she finally saw the object of all her thoughts, his shoulders somewhat slumped.

"Oh, there you are, Link!" she called to him. Hurrying over, she grasped his bare hand between her two gloved ones. "I received your message; thank you. I'm sorry we couldn't work on rehearsing this evening. I shall have to tell you about the progress the children have made on the scenery and props. I'm sure they'll definitely be ready in time for the play on Christmas Eve."

He made a non-committal sound in his throat, but at least he didn't shake off her touch.

"But oh, let's not stand here in the cold," she said, with a hint of laughter in her tone. "Are you as hungry as I am? Let's go somewhere nice and get something to eat, just the two of us. No little brothers to bother us!"

"No sister, either?" he quipped without much enthusiasm.

She bumped him with her elbow. "You know Aryll is welcome anytime. She's no pest, let alone two of them. But she has probably already had dinner. Come on now!"

They returned to the same little café at which they had ordered hot chocolate that first night she had waited for him outside the store. Their favorite table by the window was empty, which pleased her. Their waitress this time was named Hena, and as soon as she took their orders she bustled away. Zelda let her coat hang about her shoulders and set her gloves next to her handbag; she laced her fingers together and fixed her eyes on her friend, all the while chattering about the Christmas play, about her brothers' newest hair-raising stunt, about her day at the clinic, and asking him about his day while trying to pry out of him why he had been late.

"The floor managers all had to meet in Shad's office. We're changing the way the money is handled after the day is over," he explained.

"That's because of the robbery, right?"

He nodded, wiping a bit of mashed potatoes at the corner of his mouth. "Shad suggested that a reward be put out for information on or the capture of the thieves. Of course that old skinflint Rupin didn't like the idea."

Her eyes lit up with an almost mischievous sparkle. "Wouldn't it be wonderful if you could collect that reward?"

Link snorted. "I suppose the thieves would just walk into the store and let me corner them, hm?"

"I know it's a fanciful idea," she admitted, unabashed at his frank scorn. "But I was just thinking it would be nice for you."

Zelda kept her eyes on him almost constantly, wondering what was the best way for her to find out what had been making him so irritable of late. Her own worry was assuaged slightly as she saw the pinched, grumpy look on his face easing up as he had the chance to relax and eat something warm. They were very nearly finished eating and she had been chattering about silly things the whole time; if she was going to take advantage of the opportunity before her, then she couldn't wait any longer!

"Link…" she began a bit hesitantly. "Did…things really go well at the store today? I mean, aside from the meeting that kept you late?"

"Why do you keep asking me that?" he returned, a bit of an annoyed edge to his tone.

Her mouth dipped at the corners. "I ask because I'm interested in your day. You seem like…like something's eating you. Am I wrong?"

"The store was fine," he replied quickly. "Look, I'm done. Are you ready to leave?"

He'd already paid for their meal, so they departed and walked the streets for a while. Zelda lifted her head to the gently falling snow and noticed the way the white flakes dimmed the glow of the city lights. She was a bit quieter at first, as her mind was filled with thoughts that whirled more than the snow around them; he had evaded her questions and that had to mean there was definitely something he didn't want to talk about. She knew she had to proceed cautiously, lest he become still grumpier and more sullen at her prodding inquiries. Waiting for another opportunity to present itself, she kept her tongue busy with other items of interest. They walked for several blocks and when their fingers and toes were almost like icicles, Link took her home.

"Do you want to come inside and warm yourself?" she asked as she reached for the doorknob.

Link turned down her kind offer, his attention seeming to be elsewhere.

"Please do come in. It's getting to be frightfully cold out here," she pressed him further, wishing he'd stop craning his head like he was searching for something in the darkness. Perhaps if he came in, she could press him further and find out what was on his mind.

"No…thanks. I can't."

She tried to reach out for him but he'd already backed down the step. "Please!"

"Not this time. I have to go," he said, and he was already marching down the walk before she reluctantly shut the door.

* * *

_ Goodness, today was a busy day. I had hoped I would publish this chapter a little sooner, but that obviously didn't happen. Anyway, keep tuned for the next one, and don't hesitate to let me know what you thought of this one. _

_Merry Christmas to you all!_

* * *

12-24-2019 ~ Published (5,208 words)


	4. Missing

**Keeping Hope for Christmas - by Pseudo Twili**

Chapter 4: Missing

The next morning at the clinic, Zelda was seated before the switchboard. She much preferred to work at the reception desk, as that gave her the chance to observe and perhaps talk to the people who came in. The staff at the clinic knew her strengths and usually wanted her in that role, but the regular switchboard girl was at home with a throat cold and someone had to answer all the calls.

She operated the board with decisive jerks which were fueled by ire that had been simmering since Link's abrupt departure the night before. She'd shed a few more tears, but then the more she thought about it the more irritated and indignant she became. The young man was terrible at communicating his feelings or anything else closely entwined with them, and resisted when she or anyone else attempted to probe him. In the small hours of the morning before she'd finally managed to drift off to sleep, she'd resolved to confront Link and help him get to the bottom of his problem.

She had awakened later than usual and had to rush to barely arrive at the clinic on time. She knew Link would already have headed to the store and thus she would have to wait to talk to him. With a few hours to ruminate, she had some qualms but was still determined. She would try to help him find a way out of the long, dark tunnel in which he seemed to have lost himself, though she knew it would be arduous, even painful. She suppressed a small sigh as she inserted a plug into the jack below a newly flashing light.

"Goodwell Clinic," she said, her tone brisk and efficient.

"…Is that you, Zelda?" said the voice on the other end.

"Aryll?" She paused, another plug in her hand. She was of half a mind to vent a few of her irate thoughts, but knew that would be unkind. After all, the girl couldn't control what her brother did. "Yes, it's me. I had to take a turn at the switchboard. Oh, just a moment… another call is coming in."

As soon as she switched back to the line Aryll was on, the other girl burst out, "Have you seen Link?"

Zelda had thought that her friend sounded a bit odd at the very first word she'd spoken, but hadn't considered what it meant until that moment. Her eyes fixated on the jacks and unlit buttons above them, but her mind was already wandering, worrying, and jumping to some pretty hefty conclusions, and her heart thundered loudly in her ears.

"No, I haven't," she replied slowly. "Not this morning. Just last night he dropped me off at home. What's wrong, Aryll?"

"He didn't come home last night," the other girl replied, her tone edged with the panic she was obviously trying to stave off. "I always hear him come in… and anyway his bed hasn't been pulled out. I called the store and now you. He hasn't shown up for work. I asked the superintendent of our building to call me if Link came in, but I've heard nothing. Oh, Zelda, what's happened to him?"

She fought to keep her own fluttering hands from doing the wrong thing on the board. "Don't worry, we'll find out. It's probably something really simple that kept him out. He'll come home with that look like a naughty puppy and then we can scold him. Don't worry, Aryll," she said, and wished she could have half of the conviction that her words seemed to hold. "Are you at the library?"

"Yes. Oh, Zellie, you've got to help me! I don't know what to do!"

She allowed herself a second to capture a shaking breath. "We'll find him, Aryll. We will. How much longer do you have at the library?"

"An hour," the other girl replied, a bit of a tremor in her voice. "But I think I can get off sooner if I ask the head librarian."

"I can't leave the switchboard—there might be an emergency—but you can come down here and as soon as my relief arrives, we can go looking at the places he might be. Meanwhile, I'll make some calls and ask around."

Aryll sniffled. "Thanks, Zellie. I knew you'd know what to do. I was getting so worried!"

"It'll be all right. We'll find him, I know we will."

Though she said those words, she found herself trembling and unsure if she could believe herself. As she ended the call, she looked down at her hands. If only she had used those hands to pull at Link's, to urge him to take refuge in her home the night before, instead of letting him shuffle back into the cold and snow! It wasn't like him to stay out all night, or to miss a day of work if he was anything less than confined to bed. What could take him away from the sister with whom he'd finally been reunited, from the work that he clung to as though it were his lifeline, and from her, the girl who knew she loved him as only a true friend could?

"Where are you, Link?" she whispered, tears prickling at her eyelids.

Her vision was slightly blurry but still she saw the new light on the switchboard and she fumbled with the plug as she hastened to answer the call. As soon as she was free and even though she was not supposed to do it, she got an outside line and put through her own call to Rupin's department store. She spoke to Shad's secretary, whom she managed to convince to let her speak to the store manager himself.

"I don't know if you remember me, Mr. Shad," she said, trying her utmost to remain calm. "My name is Zelda Harkinian and I met you and your wife at that party a couple of months ago. I was with Link."

"Ah, yes, Miss Harkinian. What can I do for you?"

"Is Link there at work?" she asked, knowing how foolish it was to cling to that little bit of hope that this was all a misunderstanding. "Aryll said he didn't come home last night."

The manager's tone grew more serious. "He has not come to the store. His sister has called twice already. I have instructed the doormen and elevator operators to notify me the moment he comes in." He paused, the unspoken "if" in his voice reaching Zelda even through the wires. "I'm sorry I have no better news, Miss Harkinian. I suggest you go to the police."

A tear slid down the side of her nose and she quickly wiped it away. "I will… Thank you."

The headphones, mouthpiece and the cables that connected them were like the manacles and irons that kept her a prisoner to the switchboard. They prevented her from leaping to her feet and flying off to meet Aryll and search for the man who was surely one of the closest friends she'd ever had. With every molecule of her being, she wanted to believe that Link was going to appear and make them all feel foolish for being so worried, but a little nagging voice had crept from a dark corner in her mind and would not leave her. It whispered things to her that she did not want to even contemplate.

As she answered another call she was still trying to convince herself that she wasn't caught in some terrible dream. Using the outside line again, she checked at all the places that Link might frequent: the gym where he sometimes worked out, eateries they often patronized, a couple drugstores, and the superintendent of his apartment building. Not one person she spoke to had seen the young man at any point after she last had. She wanted to call her father and tell him all, but she remembered that he was out of town for the day on business and would not be back until late afternoon. Regardless, she called his office, and his secretary, Hilda, confirmed what she'd already known.

About an hour later, Aryll rushed through the fronts doors of the clinic; what little makeup she usually wore was rubbed away and the skin around her eyes was puffy and red. She came around the corner, spotted Zelda at the switchboard, gave a little hiccupping gasp, and scuttled over. She threw her arms around the elder girl, not caring about the apparatus that was in the way.

After Aryll calmed down and mopped her tears for about the twenty sixth time, Zelda explained, "I've been calling all the places I could think of but no one's seen him."

"I went back to our apartment…just to see if he'd come back yet…" she murmured, and looked like she was ready to devolve into tears again. She took a couple of deep breaths and released them slowly. "And I asked the super, and all the neighbors who were home."

Zelda didn't need to hear another word to know how unfruitful those inquiries had been. She pressed at Aryll's hand with her own. Somehow she found it a little easier to be calm and to hold back her tears because she knew the other girl needed someone to lean on. Both of them sat there, Aryll in the chair she'd scooted over from the waiting room; they clasped each other's hands whenever Zelda was not using both of hers to operate the switchboard.

"You don't think he's been…kidnapped, d-do you?" the blonde young lady asked in a whisper.

Some weeks back, they'd all seen the front page story about a man who had been abducted. He was held for an exorbitant ransom and his company, of which he was vital and leading part, received the demand to pay it. There had been some delay while the old fogies on the board of directors argued about what they were to do. They ended up paying the ransom, but the kidnapped man did not show up. Several days later his body was found in the river and he'd been dead since before the payoff. The horror of it had stuck with Aryll and she couldn't forget it.

The elder girl started, her eyes growing wider as she stared at her friend. It was a terrible thought! "I…I don't know," she said, and her heart hammered against her ribcage. "…Why would anyone want to kidnap him? He isn't wealthy by any means." But she couldn't forget it either, and it added itself to the swirling pool of other worries in her mind.

No sooner had Zelda's replacement come through the doors than she clapped her hat to her head, threw on her coat, and both girls made for the street in record time. They hastened through the snow to the nearest police station. Zelda glanced up at the placard which depicted it as being in the thirty-third precinct. Aryll paused, her step faltering and her face crumpling; she hated to go inside and make the report she knew they must, for that would cement in her mind the fact that her brother really was missing. However, Zelda circled her arm around the younger girl's and gave her an encouraging nudge.

After first speaking to the desk sergeant, they were directed to an office down the hall. There they had to wait several minutes for the detective to come back. As they were perched on a bench in the hallway, both girls looked up at every sound, hoping that they'd be called in the next moment. Finally, a man with a short red beard strode up the hall and entered the small, cluttered office. The young ladies followed him inside and had to wait again while he answered the phone a couple of times, his tone terse and his features weary.

"I'm Zauz," said the detective, and he seemed to be glowering at the girls from beneath his thick red eyebrows. He shuffled a few papers on his desk. "Missing person? Gotta fill out a report. Who is missing and when and where was he last seen?

"It's my brother, Link," Aryll said. "He didn't come home last night."

"Last name?"

"Oh, um, Wolfspaw."

"Physical description?"

She dabbed away at a new tear trickling down her cheek; her friend was already holding her hand and she squeezed her gloved fingers.

Zelda replied, "He's about…well almost six feet tall, I think. He has blonde hair…it's darker than Aryll's though… and blue eyes." A pang of guilt coursed through her as she thought of those blue eyes looking at her across the café's table.

"Weight? What was he last seen wearing?"

"Um, I think he's probably about a hundred fifty pounds or so," Aryll said, sniffling into her hankie. "Maybe a little more. He's been eating better. And he was wearing … a light brown topcoat and um… a grey wool suit."

"And your name is?"

"Aryll Wolfspaw Galen. …I-I was adopted and took my new family's name with my own."

"When did you see him last, Miss Galen?"

"I saw him last evening," Zelda said, not caring for the scrutinizing glance of the detective as he turned it on her again. "He dropped me off at my home."

"And who are you?"

"My name is Zelda Harkinian. Both Link and Aryll are very good friends of mine, and of my family."

Then, anticipating what question he might next ask, she informed him of her address. If he was impressed by either her name or her definitely upper-class home, he didn't even bother to arch one of his impressive eyebrows.

Zelda took a deep, shaking breath, glanced at her friend and plunged right in. "…Do you think he might've been kidnapped?"

He eyed them briefly, skeptically. "He's not rich or important, is he?" he questioned back, his tone carrying a hint of sarcasm.

"He's important to me," Aryll replied. "But we're not wealthy."

"Is it possible…that someone might want to get a ransom for him from my family?" Zelda queried a bit tremulously.

The detective impatiently rapped his pencil on his desk a few times. "That's not usually the way it works, Miss Harkinian. You'd be a far likelier candidate for such a snatch, being that it's your family with the money. Anyway, have you received a ransom note?"

Both young ladies shook their heads.

"You'll let us know if that happens, won't you?" He cleared his throat and tapped his implement again. "Now, if you don't mind getting back to the report… Does he have any distinguishing marks? A birthmark, moles, scars or anything of that sort?"

"He has a small burn scar on the back of his left wrist," replied Zelda. When she'd asked him about it, he'd told her it was from a cooking accident.

Aryll took a breath and added, "He has a scar on his back, too. It's, um… it's near his right shoulder, I think."

The detective continued to ply the girls with indifferent questions, learning of Aryll's shared apartment, where Link worked, where the girls worked, of any other friends of Link's, and of places he was wont to go in his spare time. All the while, the red-headed detective scribbled away at the missing-person's form, his writing leaving deep impressions in the blotter below.

"Did it occur to you that he just might've gotten plastered last night and had to sleep it off somewhere?" Zauz asked, once more fixing them with a disinterested look.

"Oh, no, not Link!" Aryll cried. "He wouldn't do that!"

Zelda stiffened, staring back at the detective. "He doesn't drink," she said firmly.

"Oh? How can you be so sure?" he challenged her, finally lifting those eyebrows.

"We've been to parties but Link never takes a drop," she persisted. "When we eat out he never orders alcohol, he doesn't keep it in his apartment, and even refuses the little snorts of brandy my father offers him. I've known him long enough to know he definitely doesn't drink."

"Hm…" he muttered, his brows camping directly over his eyes once more. He dashed out a couple more words on the paper. "We'll do a check of the jails, the hospitals, and the morgue."

"The morgue?" Aryll almost wailed, her eyes widening with fright and dread.

Zelda's own lips opened in a little round shape, her forehead crinkling as she tried to make reason out of his words. Her heartbeat quickened.

"It's a matter of routine," the detective replied, showing his first, though slight, sign of empathy toward the distraught girls. "We have to cover all the bases. But I could lay you odds he won't be in the morgue. But you two had better go back to work and let us handle it."

Aryll blew her nose, which was by that time rather pink and tender. Zauz rose from his chair as the two girls made their exit. Once out on the street again, they both felt very empty and even Zelda was dangerously close to giving in to the threatening tears. She realized, however, that giving in to all the feelings that warred within her would leave her an emotional wreck and she needed to be able to function for the rest of the day.

They decided to have a rather late lunch, dropping in at a little place just down the street. Zelda's thoughts never strayed very far from their visit to the station and the reason for going there. Once they'd ordered their food, she turned to her golden-haired friend.

"I didn't know he has a scar on his shoulder… Do you know how he got it?"

Aryll shook her head. "He'd just taken a shower and was getting dressed in his room when I had a little accident in the kitchen. I spilled some oil and it immediately caught fire. Startled and panicked, I shouted for him and he came running. Um, fortunately, he'd already put on his trousers… Well, he put out the fire quickly and when he turned to go… I n-noticed the scar. It was a thick, white line and looked like it was years old. But I didn't remember him having it when we were children. I asked him how he got it. He was angry, I don't know if it was because of the fire or my question, and he went back to his room, slamming the door behind him."

"Hmm…I wonder what it was," mused the elder of the two. She didn't dwell on it too long, however, as there was the more urgent matter of what had happened to him.

Neither of them had much appetite. Zelda poked at her club sandwich and made a valiant effort at nibbling at its edges like a nervous mouse, but when it was about half gone she knew she couldn't stomach any more. She paid no attention to the generous amount of rupees she left on the table. Aryll followed her back to the clinic, as the younger girl didn't have to return to the library. Zelda explained the reason for her late return, and Nurse Anjean, who was the head of staff, softened somewhat and asked whether she wanted to take the rest of the day off.

"…I think I should keep busy," Zelda replied. If she remained idle, her thoughts would likely overcome her and the tears would finally flow without restraint. She wanted to stave that off as long as she could, until she was safely at home and in the privacy of her own bedroom.

Despite her best intentions, she still couldn't keep her thoughts from wandering as she finished her afternoon's work; as such, she was a bit absentminded in her tasks. The time seemed to laugh at her by creeping by as slowly as it dared; she wouldn't have been surprised if it had stood completely still and left her to her misery.

With eyes still full of unshed tears, Aryll wouldn't leave the clinic without her, no matter what Zelda said about going home. The elder of the two soon ceased asking her, seeing her emotionally determined state, and Aryll sometimes lingered in the front room like she was haunting it, or found Zelda at whatever task she was doing. Both girls had wished to hear some news from the police and by the end of the day their very hope was weary.

They walked out to the street together, both so tired they could almost fall asleep in the snow. "I suppose I should…go home…" the golden-haired girl murmured, her voice without even the slightest hint of her customary sunshine.

Zelda, however, pulled her arm a little closer and said, "No, you can't do that. You shouldn't go back to your apartment alone. Come home with me, Aryll."

The other young lady nodded and closed her eyes for a moment, her lashes filled with tears again. She gave Zelda's hand a half-hearted squeeze.

Arriving at the grand house, Zelda was suddenly reminded of the night before and she choked back a sob. She and Aryll hastened into the warmth inside, her thoughts on the Christmas Eve last, when Link had been with her, when Techer took his coat instead of his sister's as the butler was now doing. Her eyes locked with Aryll's dark green ones and guilt filled her soul; what a terrible thing it was to wish that she could have him back at Aryll's expense!

The two boys bounded down the stairs, hollering and chasing each other. They spotted the girls, Zill slapped his brother and then took off. Joel responded with an indignant "Hey!" and pelted after him. Their sister caught Zill before he ran into her, and then she tried to push him aside.

"Hello, Aryll!" called Joel, coming up behind his brother and making a face at him.

"Is Link with you?" Zill demanded. "We want to play! Where is he?"

"We want him to be the bad guy and we're going to storm his castle!"

"No, that isn't so! He's going to teach us to wrestle!"

"Nuh-uh!"

"Is so!"

Before the argument could escalate further, Zelda grabbed sharply at a shoulder of each boy and cried, "Stop it! Stop it, you two! You're such little pests, you know that?! You're the wickedest boys that ever lived!"

She gave a little sob, turned and tripped up the stairs, fleeing down the hall to her room. She slammed her door with a sound that carried even to the boys who stared after her with wide eyes and the most stupefied expressions. Aryll looked down at the little rascals, her lip quivering.

"Link…" she said, swallowing a small gasp. She fumbled with her purse. "…He's missing."

Then she too retreated upstairs, to cry and commiserate with her friend. Meanwhile, the boys, much deflated, looked at each other and crept away like the couple of scolded puppies that they were. Zelda had on occasion raised her voice to quell their rising shenanigans, to nip some mischief in the bud, but never had she yelled at them in so unrestrained a fashion, nor with such a stricken expression. They knew something bad had happened and their gleeful penchant for mischief faded just slightly for the moment.

Zelda was lying on her bed, her feet hanging over the side and her face in the coverlet as she wept agonizing tears. Aryll moved quietly over to her and sat next to her friend, not even caring that her own tears fell and were making a splotchy mess of her blouse.

"I-I shouldn't have yelled at them," Zelda sniffled, turning her head slightly toward the other girl. "I don't know why I did it… I just felt so tired and hopeless and helpless."

"I…know," Aryll sobbed, and covered her mouth.

Rising, Zelda threw her arms around her friend. They clutched at each other's shoulders as if that was the only thing keeping them from coming apart at the seams like a worn garment. She would later apologize to her brothers and explain the situation simply to them. For the time being it was enough to hold the one other person whose heart ached as much as hers.

A definitive knock sounded on the outer door. The two young women looked at each other and pulled back. Sniffling, Zelda used her handkerchief in an attempt to wipe up some of the tears. When she opened the door, there stood her father in the hall. Having just returned from his trip, he hadn't even loosened his tie or taken off his coat. He took one look at her and she at him; his face contorted with great concern and hers melted even as she buried her face in his broad chest. He put his arms around her as tenderly as though she were a porcelain doll.

"There, there," he said. "Don't cry so, my little flower. What's wrong? What is the matter?"

Her shoulders jumped with a couple of great sobs. "…L-Link," she wept into his jacket, feeling like she was eight years old again.

Gustaf's hold around her tightened somewhat, his jaw working but no words forthcoming yet. He didn't know yet what she meant, but he wished he could protect her from it. If he'd been mistaken in his judgement of the young man in question… It had happened before, after all. He would protect his little girl, no matter what it took!

She pulled back, pressing her hands against him and raising her moistened eyes to again meet his. "Daddy, we don't know where he is."

He released a quick breath, relieved for just the moment that his daughter's trouble was not of the kind that a father might most dread. He glanced up then and noticed Aryll, who was crying as she wrapped her arms around the bed post. Zelda and her father sat down too and the girls explained the events of the day. He listened with the whole of his being, paying especial attention to and asking questions about their visit to the police station. When the girls were spent with tears and the hour was growing late, he bid them a good night, promising that he would use whatever means he could to further the search for Link.

When Zelda asked her friend if she wanted one of their many guest rooms, Aryll's lip quivered. Looking younger than her eighteen years, her eyes besought the other young lady. Though silent, those dark green eyes were more eloquent than any words she might have forced from her tongue.

"I guess you don't want to be alone either, hm?" said Zelda. "Why don't we both just sleep here? My bed is big enough to swallow the both of us."

"Th-thanks, Zellie."

"It won't quite be like a sleepover," she said sadly, using her hand to cover a yawn. "It's been a long time since I had one of those. But I don't feel like staying up to all hours, talking and giggling. I just…want to go to sleep so maybe the morning will bring something better."

She took the stuffed loftwing Link had once given her off her bed where it usually rested, setting it on the chair before her dressing table. It was balanced rather precariously and moments later it toppled to the floor, going unnoticed by its owner.

The morrow began like any other, save that something of considerable weight tugged at Zelda's heart as she tried to complete her usual routines. She and Aryll first stopped at the precinct station, but the police had nothing new to tell them. Their hopeful emotions dragging in the proverbial dust, the two young ladies separated and each went off to their respective jobs, though neither was able to concentrate fully at much of what she did.

They continued to make frequent stops at the station and calls to the police, desperately, sometimes tearfully asking about Link. The answer varied slightly but always amounted to the same thing. They were still conducting their investigation and had found no one who had seen the missing young man or knew where he might be. Gustaf used his influence to prod the police commissioner, and he hired some private detectives, but the latter found nothing that Hyrule's finest had overlooked.

"He paid the cabbie outside your door," Detective Zauz explained to both girls. "The cabbie drove off and didn't see where he went. We checked with the other cab companies and no one reports taking anyone of his description anywhere else. We've checked the other places he goes, and asked the people there to call us if he should show up. We've checked the hospitals and jails. We've put out a bulletin with his full description. Nothing has turned up. You don't realize what a task it is to find a missing person in a city of this size."

"Oh, but isn't there something else you can do?" Zelda pleaded.

"What more can I do?" he returned shortly. "Even if we could devote all our time to this one case, I couldn't guarantee results. Do you know how many crimes are committed in this city each day? Thefts, assaults, burglaries, killings and so on… and not to mention all the petty crimes? And then there are the jokers who give us false alarms. That same night this young man of yours disappeared there were twenty-seven such calls and at least that many each day since. How can we try to prevent some of these crimes when have to go on wild goose chases?! We're no magicians. We cannot be in two places at once!"

"But you have to do something!" she protested. "Is it that hard to find just one man?"

She knew she was being a bit selfish, by her insistence she was adding another stone to the load which Zauz and the other officers of Hyrule's finest were obviously already carrying. She sighed a little to herself, wishing she could find her friend instead of having to rely on others to do the task. Almost every moment she was awake she wondered and fretted about Link, and those thoughts even permeated her dreams, leaving her in worse a state than before.

"I'm sorry," said the detective, gruff even in his apology, the dark circles evident beneath his eyes. "It is not easy to find anyone who does not want to be found in a city of this size."

Zelda, however, hardly said a word as she and Aryll made their departure, indignant that Zauz again inferred that Link was missing on purpose. Then she bit at her lip and tried to blink away the tears that threatened to spill over. She had to stop at the washroom to compose herself and blow her nose.

Aryll was still staying with Zelda and her family, as the elder of the two girls insisted it be.

"But what if Link should come back and no one's there?" Aryll said, though she was none too vehement in her protest.

"Leave a note," returned a quick-thinking Zelda. "In fact, leave several notes, so he'll be sure to see them…if he sees them at all. But you can't go back there by yourself. You'd be too lonely…and so would I!"

Thus, Aryll only returned to her apartment to put a few personal things in a suitcase and to leave a number of notes, one in the small mirror in his room, on his pillow, in the band of his spare hat, in the pocket of his coat, on the table with the lamp, on the side of the bathroom sink, on the kitchen counter, in and on the refrigerator, and any other place the two girls thought he would be bound to see them. With a thick feeling of emotion in her throat, she bent and turned the key in the lock. Turning away, she dropped the little item in her pocketbook, took up her suitcase and grabbed Zelda's arm in a grip tighter than it really needed to be.

Anxious for news, Zelda would make visits to the police station rather than call, as then it would be harder for the detective to brush her off. She pestered him and repeatedly asked him what he was doing to find her friend.

"Look here, miss!" he said, as tiredness, frustration and an overload of cases put a frayed edge to his tone. "Did it ever occur to you that your friend might have encountered some trouble that turned out be rather permanent?"

Her brow furrowed as she tried to discern his meaning. "Y-you mean… He might be…" she said, swallowing thickly and choking over the difficult word as her eyes suddenly seemed cloudy.

"I hate to break it to you, but yes, he might be dead. Nearly all missing person cases are either a result of someone wanting to disappear, or because of an accident or foul play."

She tried to blink away the tears. "But…wouldn't you find something then?" she asked in a whisper. She couldn't even breathe as she awaited the answer.

"Maybe. No matter how hard someone tries to hide a body, sooner or later it usually crops up. But it can take a while. We're keeping a check of all unidentified corpses that come into the morgue. We'll…notify you if anything turns up."

She couldn't stay in his office a moment longer. Rushing therefrom as if it was the scene of a grisly murder, she stumbled into the ladies' room and gave up everything she'd eaten that day, and all the while tears streamed down her cheeks. She didn't have the heart later to tell Aryll about her conversation with Zauz; however, it never left her mind no matter how much she insisted that Link couldn't possibly be dead. She kept it locked in her heart, where it would emerge to rankle her in her saddest, most despairing moments.

The days of waiting for something, anything, to happen wore heavily on both young ladies, and upon Zelda's family. The girls seemed to have lost the ability to really smile, even at Joel and Zill's crazy escapades. Though the snow fell thicker and more Christmas decorations were popping up everywhere, Zelda's thoughts were far from what she had earlier hoped would be a truly merry season.

She went to the Maple Home for Children and explained regretfully that their plans for the play were not to be, and that they should make other arrangements, if possible. She helped the girls finish the dress and encouraged the boys to continue with the monster's mask, all the while wondering if it was all for nothing. She knew she was being selfish, but without Link there she couldn't summon the same enthusiasm over the children's play. She tried to keep her hope, but after three days of having no news she felt like a waterlogged swimmer going down for the last time.

Then something broke in the case, but it was nothing anyone had expected. Someone had gained access to Link and Aryll's apartment and cleaned out his room.

* * *

_Perhaps in fiction you've run across a situation in which someone goes missing, and the family of the missing party go to the police, only to be told they must wait twenty-four hours? I've seen that before too. Though actually in researching that little item, I learned that it's recommended to make a missing-person report as soon as possible. Let's just say that would also apply some 70+ years ago, too. _

_I was also looking up information on switchboard operators. For instance, I was trying to find out if the little lights would appear above or below the jacks that the operator would plug the lines into. From what I found, it seems as though it could be either way, so I just decided on which one I wanted to use. Of course the board Zelda was operating was just a small switchboard in the clinic and nothing like the ones at the telephone exchanges. _

_Did any of you notice the significance of the number of the precinct station Zelda and Aryll entered?_

* * *

12-26-2019 ~ Published (5,857 words)


	5. Encounter

Thank you all for the reviews you've been sending me, and especially for the speculation and theories about what might be happening. Those are delightful! They're like a transfusion for a weary writer who's been slaving over and stressing about the completion of this darn story. Thank you so much! Keep 'em coming!

* * *

**Keeping Hope for Christmas - by Pseudo Twili**

Chapter 5: Encounter

_Dec. 13. It's been three days now. I can't get out and they haven't come back. I tried throwing myself at the door but it was useless. It's made of thick metal and wouldn't budge for anything less than a battering ram. I couldn't shatter the glass either. I shouted for hours, hoping someone would hear me. All I got was a sore throat. Then that just left me to go through the room. It's about sixteen by seven and ten feet up to the ceiling. A bunch of boxes were thrown in one corner and that's where I found this and a few other empty ledgers. I have decided to make a record of my imprisonment…in case I cannot escape…_

_My name is Link Wolfspaw and I am twenty-two years old. I work in the sporting goods department of Rupin's department store and I live with my sister Aryll at 1920 Eventide Lane. I do not know where I am being held. It must be an abandoned building because I hear no sounds of life. I can see only another brick wall through the tiny window near the ceiling. Perhaps this room was used for illegal deals or bootlegging operations. There is a small bathroom connected to it, but unless I can squeeze into the sink pipe there is no escape for me there. _

_It's cold here. I have to wrap myself in all the blankets to keep warm. At first I tried doing exercises to get my blood going, but now I need to conserve my energy. I haven't had anything to eat since I had dinner with Zelda that night… I think she wanted to ask me something but I don't think she knew quite how to do it. I'm glad she didn't. I don't know how to tell her why I can't ask her to be more than a friend. I want to be, but I am too afraid. I just can't do it! She was so sweet to me when she said goodbye at her door. If only I had accepted her invitation to come inside… Then I wouldn't have gotten into this mess…_

~o~

As they climbed out of the cab, in just a split-second Link caught a flash of a familiar face under a lamppost just down the street. But Zelda had already taken his arm and he had to move up the walk with her. He was seized by a creeping sense that something was wrong, heralded by back of his neck going all stiff. He hardly paid attention to the young lady, retreating before she had fully closed the door. However, he paused in the shadows long enough to see that she was safely inside.

He had intended to take the cab to his apartment, but in his uneasiness he changed his mind. As he handed the cabbie a few differently colored rupees, he took a couple more glances to his left. The figure was still loitering about, and if Link wasn't pretty sure he recognized the face, he probably would have thought the man was just waiting for someone. As soon as the cab pulled away, Link put his fists into the pockets of his topcoat and began to meander down the street as if he was just taking his time. He caught another glimpse of the other man and knew he was not mistaken; that was face he'd never forget. The stranger noticed him but pretended that he did not.

When they were abreast of each other, the other man made like he was going to pass by, but Link stepped in front of him. "It's been a long time, hasn't it Daupple?"

The man so ascribed struck out with his fist, all with the speed of a toad capturing a fly. Though Link tried to move at the last second, the blow connected with the side of his chin and he staggered backward. An angry exclamation was torn from his lips as he prepared to defend himself from another attack he felt sure was coming. A blade suddenly unfurled itself in the other man's hand and he held it out, threateningly.

"Hold it right there! Do I know you from somewhere? How'd you know my name?"

Link laughed, a rough sound as it left his throat. He put one hand to his chin and worked his jaw a bit. "You haven't changed a bit, Daupple. Back at the orphanage you always made out like a tough guy."

"Orphanage?" the other man repeated, lowering his weapon just a fraction of an inch. "How'd you… Who're you?"

"See for yourself."

Daupple narrowed his eyes as he stared, but a combination of the darkened street and his own faulty memory kept him from recognizing Link. Putting away his shiv and striking a match, he held it toward Link's face. He held the light there until it burned down to his fingers.

"So you're from the orphanage, huh pal? I don't remember you."

"I'm not surprised. You never were interested in anyone but yourself."

"Cut the gab," Daupple growled, putting his hand into his pocket like he was going to snap out his knife again, or perhaps something else. "Who are you and whaddya want?"

"The name is Link. You ought to know it, with how many times I got in trouble for what you did."

"Link, huh?" the other man mused. He took his hand from his pocket and rubbed his chin. "Say, were you that sap who always hanging around the little kids, acting like their protector and all that?"

"I…suppose so," he replied shortly, a frown crossing his lips and the burn of old indignation making him feel hot around the collar.

"What're you doing here?"

"Headed home. What are you doing here, Daupple? You wouldn't live in a place like this."

All the while, the other man's eyes never seemed to stop moving, always darting around and each time coming to rest on Link again. All the while his mind was churning with thoughts and possibilities of exploitation. From the first moment Link thought he recognized him, he was sure Daupple was up to something nefarious. The latter had always been creating all manner of serious mischief back in the orphanage, whether it was terrorizing those younger and weaker than him or acquiring money or other valuables through unknown and most likely underhanded methods. In fact, he'd eventually been caught and sent to reform school.

"Just passing by," Daupple said smoothly. He rubbed his bare hands together, grinned and glanced at Link. "Sorry for hitting you, old friend. I had no idea who you were. No hard feelings, right pal?"

Link grumbled under his breath. Viewing the gleam in Daupple's eye gave him a sinking feeling in his stomach. For one thing, he had never been friends with the other man while they were both under the same roof. Aside from intimidating and bullying the younger children, he'd steal things from the orphanage kitchens, the other kids, even the headmaster's office, he was forever instigating fights but only if it meant someone else aside from him would get hurt or caught, and there had been some serious suspicion that he had started a fire in the basement. They were close in age, and the fact that Daupple looked somewhat like Link had proven to be most advantageous to the former and downright troublesome to the latter.

"Hey, I mean it. But look, I'm freezing. Let's go for a drink. I'm buying."

Link's first impulse was to flatly and coldly refuse the offer, to brush off his unfriendly acquaintance for the troublemaker he was. Because of Daupple's history and the fact that he was loitering in a neighborhood in which he couldn't possibly belong, the young man began to consider another option. Perhaps if he went with him, he'd be able to figure out what Daupple was up to.

"Fine," he replied.

Link kept more than a close eye on his companion as they traveled downtown. Daupple seemed to be in a good mood as they entered the Woodfall Tavern, a rather sleazy establishment in a less desirable part of town.

"Gimme a double scotch," Daupple told the bartender. "The same for my friend here."

"No," interjected Link. "I'll have milk."

The heavy-chested bartender guffawed dryly and glowered at him. "Whaddya think this is, a tearoom? I ain't got no milk!"

Link's own face grew a little redder as his frown deepened. "Ginger ale, then. You have that?"

Daupple brushed him on the arm. "What do you want swill like that for? Come on, get yourself a man's drink!"

The young man grit his teeth and reiterated himself in something just short of a growl, "I said I'll have ginger ale."

The bartender acquiesced to his request, but not without a good deal of none-too-subtle grumbling. Meanwhile, a still grinning Daupple poked Link's arm again and suggested they settle at one of the tables. He chose one over in a corner, where there was no one else nearby. Daupple unbuttoned his overcoat, revealing underneath his cheap suit which likely cost three times less than his topcoat, and which served to arouse his companion's suspicions further. They sat down, but Link kept both feet firmly planted on the floor and sat closer to the edge of his chair. Meanwhile, the other man leaned back and crossed his legs as he viewed Link

"So, what's your racket?" Daupple questioned as he began to fiddle with the matchsticks on the table.

"I work at a department store. You could hardly call it a 'racket'."

Daupple shrugged, flipping a match between two of his fingers. "Of course it is. You sell junk to people that don't much need it, right? Just so you can take home a few bucks, while the guy at the top rakes in all the big dough. It's a racket and you're on the losing end of it, old pal."

The bartender came over with their drinks, his step heavy on the worn-out floor. Daupple flipped him a red rupee and wasted not even a second in lifting his drink to his lips. Link merely put his hand around his tall glass and eyed his companion carefully. He took a sip of his own soft beverage while he tried to calm his racing heart and figure out how to get the other man to spill what he knew.

Smacking his tumbler back to the tabletop, Daupple released a sigh. "Ahh! That puts fire in a man's belly. Have some, Link?"

"No thanks."

"You're missing out on more than this bad hooch. You're just like the rest of them suckers slaving away for a few lousy bucks. Get smart! Instead of waiting for someone to give you more, you have to grab it for yourself! Like me."

"Oh?" Link said, raising an eyebrow. He lifted the vessel to his mouth again, to hide a momentary nervous twitch of his lip. "What about you? What do you do?"

"Lotsa things, and profitable too. See this coat?" Daupple asked, lifting it near the lapels. "Nothing but the best! It's better than lining our coats with newspapers or blankets like we did back at that blasted orphanage. You could have it all too."

Hardly had those last words spilled from his lips, then he turned and signaled the bartender for another round. With another swallow of the liquid fire searing its way down his throat, the man eyed his companion again. He used his tongue to lick any traces of scotch from his lips.

"What were you doing in that swanky neighborhood, anyway, Link? You know them people in that fancy house?"

"What if I do? What is it to you?"

Still holding his glass, Daupple held up both hands, a loose grin making him look much shiftier. "Hey, don't blow a fuse. I was just asking. Lighten up, pal! Want another shot?"

The young man shook his head, indicating with a quick gesture his own glass, which was more than half-full. He took another swallow but hardly tasted the amber-hued beverage. Placing it back on the tabletop, he noticed how it had left rings of moisture on the surface. The circles were each connected to the others, much as his life was linked to those close around him. He pulled his eyes away, forcing himself to concentrate.

"You slave away for peanuts huh?" Daupple said, his voice breaking off into a chuckle. "I had some business in a department store recently… Haw haw haw!

Link's pointed ears almost visibly twitched. "What sort of business would you have there?"

"Aha ha! The profitable kind!" chuckled the other man, and forthwith proceeded to down what remained of his drink. "Speaking of profit, ol' buddy, I know a way we can help each other, and make a pile!"

"I'm…listening."

Daupple's eyes raked the area around them, satisfying himself that no one was near enough to hear. He leaned closer to Link and spoke in an undertone, some of his words a bit slurred. "Wanna know why I was really in that Hyrule Hills neighborhood? We're planning a job. A big job. But it'll go like clockwork if we have someone on the inside. You could be our key to the biggest haul yet!"

The honest young man wanted nothing more than to leap to his feet and vociferously defy the oily temptations of a man he could never have considered a friend. His hunch, leaping to his mind when he first recognized the man, was more than the frantic whisperings of his worries. His heart gave a several quick beats and his hand shook a bit as he grasped but did not lift his glass. What could he say? If it was the wrong thing and he aroused any uncertainty on Daupple's part, he could kiss goodbye his chances of doing anything about it. He swallowed another quick draught of his ginger ale.

"What do you mean?" he queried, his tone wary and none too eager.

The other man rose, went to the bar and returned with another drink. He downed it in one long gulp and then fixed Link in an unsteady gaze. Hiccupping, he replied in a whisper, "You know them people in that swank house, right?"

"I suppose I do."

Daupple slapped him on the shoulder. "Knew I could count on you, old pal!" He didn't even bother to quell the loud belch that morphed his last word. "You just tell us when they're out and we'll really clean 'em out! It'll be a breeze, like taking all that dough and rocks from sleepin' babies!"

He chortled and shouted for the bartender, but the man in question was busy with other customers. Lifting the tumbler, he lapped up the droplets left therein, smacked his lips and rolled the vessel around in his hands. Meanwhile, Link viewed him, his throat jumping with his heartbeat as he tapped absently at the chilled side of his own glass. He was pretty sure he had the information he needed to nail Daupple, but how was he supposed to extricate himself from the situation? Link would have felt confident enough to handle himself in a fight, but he was unarmed and he didn't know whether Daupple had anything other than a knife in his pocket. He lifted his beverage for another swallow, but with his trembling fingers he fumbled and spilled what remained of it.

"You sure you ain't got no scotch in that thing?" the other man chortled.

Link's chair made a screeching sound on the floor as he hurriedly scooted backward, too late to keep most of the liquid from splattering his trousers. He pulled his handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed at the wetness, growling under his breath and mentally berating himself for betraying his jumpiness. Only then did it occur to him to right the glass.

"I'm going to the washroom. Excuse me," he said

Daupple just grinned and headed for the bar again. Once the bathroom door had closed behind him, Link tried to breathe deeply a few times. His mind was spinning like clothes in a washer and his hands shook as he turned on the grimy faucet. If his estimation was correct, his old acquaintance had his hand in several criminal activities; he even had a suspicion that Daupple may have had a hand in the robbery at the store. If that was the case, then the police would surely want to know what he'd learned.

An idea leapt into his frazzled mind and he didn't even bother to dry his hands as he moved to the door and peeked out. His eyes settled on Daupple, leaning against the bar while he nursed his new drink, his back mostly to Link. With his heart pounding harder than ever, the young man took a breath and slipped out of the washroom, searching for something else in that dim barroom. After a moment he spotted the telephone and made for it, trying to appear as casual as possible. He stepped into the small booth and shut the door behind him, grateful that the light had long since burnt out and not been replaced by the miserly owner. Lifting the earpiece with trembling fingers, he took one more look behind him, noting that his erstwhile companion hadn't moved.

"Number please."

He leaned near the receiver and murmured. "Give me the police. Hurry!"

As the operator dialed, he cast several glances back toward Daupple and twisted the stiff telephone cord around his fingers, loosening it when a male voice sounded in his ear. He all but jumped forward, his mouth just a fraction of an inch from the receiver.

"Listen carefully. I'm at the Woodfall Tavern. There's a man here who you need to arrest. You've got to send someone here and get him. I think I can keep him here for a while, so you have to hurry!"

"Whoa, whoa now! Slow down!" the policeman said. "You've got to give me more details than that, buddy. What's this man done?"

Link could hear the tone of skepticism even over the wires. He began mangling the corners of the already tattered and torn telephone book. "I think he might have had a hand in the robbery at the store and I don't know what else! He's been drinking and bragging. And he wants me to help him steal from—"

A sudden banging on the outside of the booth startled him out of his wits. He slammed the receiver back onto its hook and whirled, expecting to see Daupple leering at him from the other side of the glass, but instead the face that greeted him was one of a gibbering, stumbling barfly. From first glance Link could tell the man was fried to the eyeballs. He eased out of the telephone booth, knowing the drunk would likely cause more of a commotion if he did not comply.

His heart all but palpitating out of his chest, he once again looked around, amazed with relief when he saw that Daupple was still slouched over the scratched and unpolished bar. Feeling that he had a reprieve, he once again retreated into the washroom, remaining there for several minutes until he managed to calm his nerves slightly. He loosened his tie, splashed cold water on his face and forced himself to take deep breaths.

_All I have to do is wait for the police to come,_ he thought, trying to reassure himself. _If I can just keep Daupple distracted long enough for them to get here… I hope they come. I didn't get to tell them much._

He rubbed his face with the grungy towel, grateful for the roughness against his face; it made him feel something more than the concerns that ate away at his mind like a caterpillar munching a leaf. He took another long, shaky breath, thrust his trembling hands into his pockets, and exited the washroom.

He noticed immediately that Daupple had returned to their table, and as he approached, the other man started a bit, as if he was readying to pull out his knife again. He settled down when he saw it was only Link, but as Link sat down he noticed his companion seemed more on edge, more alert despite the drinks he'd previously downed. The young man realized he was going to have to be very careful not to make him suspicious.

"What happened to you? Thought you'd drowned in there or somethin'."

Link ran his tongue over his teeth and responded slowly, "I was trying to dry my trousers."

An unamused guffaw leaving his throat, Daupple gestured toward him. "I got you another drink. Beats me why you want that swill when there's better stuff to wet your lip."

Rather than reply, Link raised the glass and took a long swallow. He noted Daupple's eye on him, his gaze pointed and direct, as if he was sizing him up. Link set the vessel a bit further away from him, not at all connected to the first ring of moisture it had created on the table. He hated the oily, almost predatory stare of his erstwhile companion, but he knew better than to flinch from it. He'd seen a very similar look back at the orphanage, when the troublemaker was sizing up his next victim, deciding how much he could get away with and how much he could rile another of the children.

While before Daupple had been genial and loose of tongue, he now seemed to Link to be quieter, more guarded. He was still quite sure that the other man, while posing to be friendly, was only after his own gains and plans, as he had only ever been those years before. Link was nervous that his companion would leave before the police could arrive; he knew he had to keep him there somehow. He gulped another swallow of his ginger ale, sloshing the liquid inside, but keeping from spilling it again.

"Are you not having anything else to drink?" he asked, hoping he didn't sound as foolish as he did in his own ears.

Daupple frowned and licked his lips, as though he was thinking about that very thing. "Naw, I gotta be sober. Sober enough to fetch you to the boss, anyway."

"Your boss? Who is he?" Link queried, glad for any string of conversation that he didn't awkwardly have to start.

"Real brains, he is. He learned me lotsa tricks that keep me alive and free. You don't wanna cross him though. Ever got a mad hog after you?"

The young man shook his head.

"He's like that, but more, like one of those wild boar things, tusks 'n' all. He can whup any man alive with his fists, and he packs a rod bigger than mine. I heard one of the other fellas saying his lead's specially made to look like boars' heads. I don't believe it, but he don't let no one mess with his gat anyway."

Link took another draught on his beverage, having realized that all his worrying and sweating had made him thirsty. As he listened, he couldn't help but imagine rolling his eyes at the ridiculous praise Daupple ascribed to his leader. Link could almost think the other man actually had some respect and admiration for anyone else, however misplaced and shallow it was. None of this made him eager to meet the man, and for the hundred and thirty seventh time he wondered what was keeping Hyrule's finest.

"How long you been in the city?" questioned Daupple. He chuckled when a loud hiccup left him.

"Several years. What about you?"

"We've been here a few months," replied the crooked fellow with a shrug of his shoulders. "We've been all around. We get plenty of dough working with him. And this city's ripe for plucking, like all the others! It's a great place, ain't it?"

Daupple finally gave in and cornered another drink for himself. He swallowed it slowly as he further extolled the so-called virtues of his boss. Link, on the other hand, was finding it increasingly hard to pay attention to his companion's words, which seemed to come from considerably further away than the chair just next to him. He eyelids drooped and every few moments he had to force them open, a task which became more laborious each time. He tried to focus on his glass of ginger ale, which was still a third full, but even that was blurry and looked as though it was on the next table instead of directly in front of him. Squinting through half-closed eyelids, he tried to lean forward to touch his glass but realized that his arm was almost too much for him to lift.

"Something wrong?" Daupple questioned, breaking off his monotonous monologue.

"I…" Link mumbled thickly, for even his tongue felt heavy. He tried to point his finger at the other man but was unsure of the efficacy of the gesture. "You… You…did this…"

"You're talking through your hat, pal."

The young man made a sound, but he couldn't form any more words; his head spun and he could barely stay upright. He lurched forward, reaching with his left hand to grab hold of Daupple. His fingers met nothing but air, then his face met the table and he knew nothing more.

~o~

_I awoke in this room, a foul taste in my mouth and a sick feeling in my stomach. I tried to get up but my body still felt heavy from the sleeping drug. I think it was morning by then. I lay on the mattress on the floor and waited as I tried to figure out where I was. _

_Then they came in. Daupple, and three more men. I don't know the names of the other two, but the big, redhaired man I learned was Dorffman, whom the others called "boss". With that sneering look that I always hated, Daupple told me the bartender had seen me making the phone call and told him. At Daupple's command, the bartender put the drug in my drink. I was such a fool to let myself be taken that way!_

Though he'd written several more words down after that, a little bit later Link came back and scratched them out, rendering them completely illegible.

_Daupple was still gloating over me when Dorffman told him to shut his yap, calling him a stupid sap for spilling their plans to me in the first place. "You know we don't go in for snatches and you had to bring him here!" their boss raged, looking like he could throttle Daupple within an inch of his life. I found myself wishing he would._

_"B-B-But he knew too much!" he protested. "And he called the cops! Wh-what else could I d—"_

_And then Dorffman really did clip him. If they didn't want to be mixed up in a kidnapping, I was hoping they'd let me go, but that was dumb wishful thinking on my part. Dorffman turned to me again and told me that since I was there, I was going to have to work with them one way or another. He said Daupple was every bit right about the job they were planning. With Christmas coming, they're going to break into the Hyrule Hill homes, Zelda's being one of them, and take everything. They want me to help them get on the inside. _

_I refused, and told Dorffman exactly what I thought of him. He grabbed me around the neck, cursed and threatened what he'd do to me. I was still weak as a new puppy and much as I hate to say it, I couldn't do anything against him. He had a strong scent of bacon about him—does he bathe in its grease or something?_

_He released me, a dark chuckle forming in his throat. "You'll stay here until you change your mind," he said. "And we'll find another way to…persuade you to help us." Then they left, locking the door immediately behind them, I know because I stumbled to my feet and pulled at it to no avail. I haven't seen them since._

_I should have turned away when I saw Daupple on the street! If I am not found before it's too late, this will serve as a record of my captors. I do not know the rest of Dorffman's name. Daupple and I were both in the Ordon County Orphanage ten years ago and he has a juvenile record from about that time. His first name is Gangler._

_Dec. 14. The gnawing feeling at my insides isn't so bad today. I am still hungry and I try not to think of food, but at least my body is adjusting to it. For a while I thought I wouldn't mind eating the pages in one of these books. I tried one and couldn't even get it down. I think I'll just keep to writing on it and not eating it. I've been through the room and the boxes in the corner so many times that I can picture them perfectly when I close my eyes. There is no food to be had, the only drink the brackish water from the faucet in the bathroom. _

_Food… I can picture it so plainly in my mind, can almost smell the apple strudel, the cabbage rolls, the meat pies, the fresh-baked flaky fish, the turkey Zelda's family had for Thanksgiving… Ugh! I mustn't think about that!_

_I wonder how Zelda and Aryll are taking my disappearance? I hope they're not too worried about me. Oh, but who am I kidding?! I know those two. I bet Zelda is all over the place, and probably will get her father to use his pull with the police to find me. Sweet little Aryll…I hope she isn't crying too much. _

A single tear splashed onto the page and Link quickly tried to brush it away. He suddenly hadn't the desire to write anymore and he tossed down his pencil. He slid the book beneath the mattress on which the thieves had dumped him, and pulled the blankets further around him. He was glad he'd still been wearing his topcoat in the bar and that no one had taken it from him afterward.

The worst thing about his imprisonment was the inactivity. Once a day he paced around the room, to get his blood flowing a bit more and to help iron the kinks out of his muscles. That slight exercise tired him more easily, though he did take breathers every few minutes. The pent-up frustration came to be too much for him to bear a couple of times and he'd taken it out on the boxes and their contents. Aside from thinking, one of the few things for him to do was to write and doodle in one of the ledgers he'd found.

Being tired, hungry and cold reminded him of his difficult time the previous year, which only served to worsen his mood. It also reminded him of something even darker, something that he thought he'd locked so deeply within himself that he didn't ever have to think of it again. But up it came, rearing its gruesome head when he was feeling his lowest. Whenever it did, he'd throw himself into some other activity in a frantic attempt to forget again.

_I realized it's just eleven days 'til Christmas. I should be with Zelda working on that play for the children. She was pretty in that dress with the glittery things on it. She was so excited to be doing it, from that very first day. She looked at me with those bright eyes of hers and I couldn't refuse her. I didn't want to spoil her fun and tell her about the last play I was supposed to be in right before Grandma died. I don't even remember what it was, some silly play my school decided to put on, but I had an important part. I practiced as hard as I could on my lines and my performance. Aryll and Grandma were going to see it. I wanted them to enjoy the play, since Grandma had been feeling a mite poorly, as she put it. I never appeared in it though. Grandma died that day and all I could do was hide backstage and cry._

There followed a couple of shaky, rather sloppy sketches of a kind, wrinkled old face that he could still picture in his mind. He had tried to take care of Aryll after their grandmother's death, but the authorities mercilessly scooped them up and placed them in separate homes. She had recently told him she could remember their beloved granny, but her recollections were mostly not as clear as his. Many a time he had wished they had a photograph of her, but the few pictures in their grandmother's little home had been discarded or lost when the siblings were separated.

_I spent months trying to track it down and I finally found—_

His last stroke ended in a scrawl as he suddenly heard a sound outside the room. Snapping the book closed, he shoved it under the battered mattress, pulled the blankets closer around him and huddled there as if he had nothing else to do. He heard the scratching of the bolts on the other side of the door being turned. He was leaning against the same wall as the door, which opened into the room and blocked his view of his visitors for a split second. He found himself clenching his jaw and bracing himself for what was to come.

Dorffman lumbered into the room, followed by Daupple and another man. They were all still wearing their coats and hats, on which melted snow glistened.

"Get up," the redheaded man ordered.

Link did not comply, merely sending a frigid stare up at his captors.

The man Link did not recognize darted toward him and yanked Link up and out of his cozy shell of blankets. "The boss said up, you lousy mug!" he hollered in the young man's face.

"Easy, Griham," Dorffman rumbled, a nasty sneer stretching his lips. He eyed Link with a cold, calculating look. "You remember what I told you? You will help us. Is that clear?" He turned his head sideways to Daupple and snapped, "Show it to him!"

Link's satisfaction that the leader was still irked with Daupple was only on his mind for a moment more before something far more electrifying took its place.

"I've been to your joint," Daupple said. "You ain't got nothing really valuable but we found a nice little item instead…"

He produced a pretty, petite blouse, and as he held it up he eyed the captive closely, waiting for his reaction. Link stared at the article of apparel for a long moment before he recognized it as one belonging to his sister. He froze for a split second while he tried to catch up to the frantic signals his brain was sending. He felt as if his blood had been turned to gasoline and touched with a lit match.

He flung himself at them, Daupple in particular, yelling and screaming all manner of names and curses. His strength and the rapidity with which he moved surprised them, driving them back a step or two. Griham and Daupple grabbed him, subdued him and forced him down on the mattress again while Dorffman looked on, his arms folded.

"You'll change your mind now that we have your sister," the redheaded man declared, his eyes cold, his expression ruthless.

Then the three of them exited the room, bolting the door behind them and leaving Link to flail helplessly in rage and depthless anguish.

* * *

_Kudos to you if you recognize the villains despite their altered names. While the other characters needed no such treatment, I felt I needed to do something a bit different with the bad guys. It's not too hard to figure out who they are, right?_

_Do you think I need a glossary for the slang I use in this story? Just let me know if there's some obscure stuff in here that needs explaining. I practically grew up on old black and white movies and radio shows, so I'm familiar with a fair bit of this slang and I looked up more besides._

* * *

12-28-2019 ~ Published (5,973 words)


	6. Taste of Despair

**Keeping Hope for Christmas - by Pseudo Twili**

Chapter 6: Taste of Despair

Zelda and Aryll were at breakfast that morning when the phone out in the hall rang, the sudden jangling startling both young ladies. Aryll trembled and dropped her fork, while her friend slapped her own utensil to the tabletop. They could only stare at each other for a frightfully long moment as they listened to a voice in the hall. Zelda jumped from her chair, her napkin falling forgotten to the floor as she hastened to the doorway. She stopped short just as the maid who had answered the call hung up the receiver.

"It was the police, miss," she said. "He wants you and Miss Galen to go to her apartment right away."

Her heartbeat quickening, Zelda queried back, "Who was it? Did he leave his name?"

"It was a Detective…Zauz, I believe."

"Th-thank you," Zelda murmured and retreated back to the dining room.

She and Aryll glanced at each other again, wondering in quiet tones what had happened. Zelda's father, who was preparing to leave for the office, insisted that their chauffeur drive the two young ladies and keep an eye on them to ensure their safety. They agreed, but mostly because they wanted no more delay in their departure. The ride over to the apartment was filled with more of the potholes of worries of mind than those in the road, as both girls fretted and wondered if they dared to hope for something fortuitous.

A few tenants were gathered around the partly open front door of Apartment 2-D, and a policeman was keeping them from entering. However, before the young ladies could broach the little cluster of neighbors and rubberneckers, the kitchen door to the same apartment opened and Zauz stepped out. His expression was just as dour and bad-tempered as before, but there seemed to be a new wrinkle above his brow. He gestured them to come inside; the young ladies hesitated a moment and looked at each other, their hearts trembling.

"What is it?" Zelda asked, her lips pulling tight at the corners. "What's happened? Why did you call us here? Have you found something?!"

Aryll's eyes wandered around her tiny kitchen, immediately noticing the open refrigerator door, a dribbling bottle of milk, and some cheese and a tomato on the floor. Her eyebrows crinkled and a frown pulled at her mouth as she pointed to the mess. "And who did that?"

"I'll do the talking, if you don't mind," the detective huffed, folding his arms and glaring. "Wolfspaw showed up here, took his clothes and lit out again. It's as plain as the nose on your face that he doesn't want to be found." He held up his hand as Zelda's mouth opened to protest and Aryll's jaw fell slack. "One of the other tenants saw him. And both the front door and this one weren't forced or picked, so he had to have used his key. You have the only other key to this apartment, don't you?"

"Yes, b-but…" Aryll said, her lip quivering.

One thick red eyebrow lowered further. "Follow me," he bade them.

He led them around the three other rooms to the little apartment, which seemed all the smaller because of the men from the police lab who were working there. Aryll's room looked to be just as neat and tidy as she had left it, the medicine chest in the bathroom was open and Link's shaving things were gone, and his room was in slight disarray. His dresser drawers were pulled out, the contents taken in a hurry, his two spare jackets that hung from a pole were gone, as was his spare hat and his few other personal items.

Zauz took a small notepad from the breast pocket of his coat and flipped to the most recent page. "There was no break-in. There were no scratches on the lock, which means he used a key," he said, raising his eyes to meet the girls' unbelieving stares and stabbing the paper with one finger as he made each point. "As near as we can figure, the only things taken belonged to Wolfspaw. The kid living upstairs was heading out on his paper route when he saw Wolfspaw and this other man come in. And he even locked the door when he left. The super used his pass key to let us in." He flipped the notepad closed with a snap and jerked it back into his pocket. "And if you're worried about the refrigerator, he probably got hungry and forgot to close the door."

"But Link knows better than to leave a mess like that!" Aryll countered, as she tried to set her quivering lips in a more resolute line. "He's n-not the neatest brother in the world, but he knows I keep an orderly kitchen."

The detective shook his head. "The evidence is all here. Your brother was the one with opportunity and means."

Zelda took a deep breath, irritation and despair warring within her heart. She noticed a faint smell which seemed out of place there, but her mind was too focused on the dilemma in front of her. It was difficult to know how to refute the solid sounding claims the detective made. "Why are you here, then?" she asked, slowly. She swept her arm out to include the other few policemen. "I mean, how did you know about all this?"

His amber-eyed gaze narrowed as they fixated upon her. "You two made such a fuss about him being missing. The super's wife heard from the kid who delivers the papers. She didn't have your number so she called us."

Zelda swallowed, her resolve to remain unflinching before him wavering. How could she have forgotten such a simple thing? "…But why go to the trouble of checking for fingerprints if no one broke in?"

The detective's lip twitched. He made a sound deep in his throat and briefly lifted his eyes to the ceiling. "Why, you ask? Why waste time on this open-and-shut case when I have dozens of others piling up on my desk? Why drag the lab boys over here only so they can tell me the only fingerprints belong to you two and Wolfspaw? Why are the commissioner and the captain breathing down my neck? This case is a dead end! There's no evidence of foul play and nothing to go on but your feelings. Why don't you accept the proof staring you in the puss?!"

Zelda wanted either to cry or to slap the aggravating detective, but she refused to give in to the former and restrained herself from the latter. No matter how many times he said it, she would not believe that Link's disappearance was of his own volition. There had to be something the police did not see. There had to be!

"What if something else is missing?" she ventured.

"What if there is?" he questioned back, folding his arms. "Why don't you just take a look around?" he said, gesturing with one hand. His expression was disdainfully annoyed, his mouth folded into a mirthless smile, as if he was thinking, _Put your money where your mouth is, sister!_

The young ladies glanced at each other and Zelda nodded to her friend; she knew Aryll was far better equipped than she in determining that little matter. The blonde-haired girl gave her hand a squeeze.

"Um, Detective Zauz?" she queried before turning to enter the bedroom. "Is it all right? I mean, about the fingerprints?"

"They've already dusted in there," replied he.

Aryll nodded and disappeared into the next room. Zauz meanwhile went over to see how the other men were coming along in their work. Zelda looked around the familiar apartment, wishing with all of her being that she could find something useful. It was the fourth day that Link was missing and her heart had ached every one of the waking seconds therein. Being in his apartment, with both tangible and intangible reminders of him, was almost too much to bear. She almost expected to see him burning himself in the kitchen, or throwing a pile of his clothes behind the fold-out couch so she wouldn't have to see them; those phantom thoughts were but a painful reminder of his absence.

As her gaze drifted about his room, her eyes clouded and she tried to hold back the tears. She dabbed at them quickly and as she lowered her handkerchief she glimpsed something small and white on the floor. Stooping, she bent and picked it up, holding it in her gloved hand. It was one of Aryll's neatly penned notes, slightly dirty with someone's shoe print. Two tears fell, one landing on her gray glove, the other splattering on the paper which she had helped orchestrate. She dried her eyes again and marched over to Zauz.

"Link didn't come back here," she declared, fixing him with what she hoped was a stern gaze. "Not this morning or any other time since he disappeared."

"And how did you arrive at that deduction?" the detective returned, turning partway toward her with a disinterested air.

Her tone was quiet; if she raised it she knew she'd get more upset and would probably cry. "Link wanted to locate Aryll for years. He saved and scrimped and nearly starved just so he could find his sister again. When they finally were reunited, they couldn't bear to be apart and so they made this home for themselves. He is devoted to his sister and he would _never_—" she put quiet emphasis on the word, "—ever cause her distress…if it were at all in his power to avoid it."

He only looked at her, one red eyebrow rising a fraction of an inch as he rubbed his stubbly chin.

She continued, "If Link had been here, he certainly would have seen one of these notes; we left enough of them around that he couldn't possibly avoid them. No matter what, if he'd been here, even if someone was with him, he would have found _some _way to get word to Aryll."

Zauz viewed her coolly for a moment after she finished. "Reasoning is useless unless you have evidence to back it up. All the evidence I see tells me Wolfspaw was here, grabbed his stuff and took a powder. Maybe you should just go back home and wait for him to contact you, eh?! And leave the detective work to the professionals!"

She tried to glower back at him. "I can't, not when you won't listen to me! I keep telling you Link would never have left so suddenly of his own accord. Why would he want to leave a good job, a sister who's devoted to him, and his…er, his friends?"

"All men have their weak point," he replied. "And we both know your fellow's job hasn't been a field of daisies. I think he got tired of it all and when he got a better offer for something more profitable, he jumped at the chance."

Feeling like she was teetering at the edge of a ravine, she hardly dared ask, "What might that be?"

"Well, it likely ain't anything legal. Look, Miss Harkinian, I've seen all kinds of people in my job, from the rich elite like you to the bums that try to hitch rides on the trains going out of town. I've seen 'em and know what makes 'em tick. Everyone's got problems, secrets they want to hide, and greed for more than they have. It's human nature."

"Then you could never understand Link," she replied coldly. "He isn't the man you think he is; he is much more."

Her eyes were prickling again and thus she turned abruptly and retreated to join Aryll in her endeavors. She still had the crumpled note in her balled fist, while her other hand clenched tightly at her purse. Why did Zauz insist on tarring everyone with the same brush of suspicion and cynicism? Was he really so jaded that he thought so little of his fellow man? She was so upset and annoyed that she couldn't spare a kind thought or even pity for him then.

She found her friend in the kitchen putting the spilled items back into the refrigerator. Taking a deep breath and then releasing it, she asked, "What have you found, Aryll?"

"It seems to be all here…except for Link's things of course. And someone took bread, pickles and cheese. But that's not strange considering this," the younger of the two said as she gestured to food on the floor. Her voice wavered. "Oh, but there was one odd thing…"

"Yes?" Zauz questioned sharply, impatiently. He came up so quickly behind the girls that he startled them.

Placing her hand over her thumping heart, Aryll let a shaky breath escape. "Zelda, um, do you remember if I packed my pink ruffled blouse? I don't think I did, but I can't find it in my closet."

"A shirt? Is that all?" he said, a frown creasing his face. "A missing shirt doesn't prove a thing. Better check the cleaners."

Zelda was on the verge of making a retort, but Aryll merely shook her head slowly. "It couldn't be at the laundry. I haven't sent anything to them in a few days, and they brought our things back the day before Link…before he…"

She choked on the last words. Zelda bit at her own lip and put her arm protectively around her friend. The detective meanwhile shifted uneasily; he could deal with hardened criminals with practiced ease, but a crying female, especially a young and pretty one, got under his skin and reduced his carefully constructed defenses to rubble.

"Was anything else missing?" he demanded quickly.

The golden-haired young lady sniffled into her handkerchief. "N-no, nothing else. A ring and necklace from my parents were still in my dresser drawer where I'd left them," she admitted truthfully.

He pulled out his notepad again and jotted something down in a few strokes. "Right," he said, and he glanced at Zelda while avoiding Aryll. He frowned again and his mouth worked for several seconds before he could form the words on his tongue. "I'll…think about what you said, Miss Harkinian. Don't get your hopes up, though. This case was colder than mackerel before this happened."

It wasn't an apology, but at least he was trying to be civil. The least she could do was reciprocate the gesture. "…Thank you, detective," she said. "Do you need us further?"

"No, that's all," he replied, glancing up from his notes again.

Zelda linked arms with her friend and they headed for door. However, Aryll stopped and turned partway back to Zauz.

"Detective, will you make sure they lock up the apartment after you've finished?" she asked, swallowing around the lump in her throat.

"Err…yeah, sure."

After that time spent in the apartment, Zelda realized she'd be late to the clinic, but knew it mattered little. Anjean was very understanding of her circumstances and had told her to take time off if she needed it. Aryll had a later shift at the library that day and thus she elected to ride with her friend. In the relative privacy in the back of the family car, the two girls held each other and cried for all the frustration, flattened hopes and seeming futility of the morning.

The idea of skipping the clinic occurred to her and even appealed to her for a moment. Then she thought of the rest of the day stretching before her like a gray storm cloud, filled with hundreds of unanswerable questions and melancholy thoughts of Link. If she had something useful to do, tasks to keep both mind and hand busy, then at least she keep from going crazy on the whirling, never-ending carousel that her tumultuous thoughts created.

A worry that she'd before quelled and pushed firmly away came to haunt and torment her again with renewed vigor. What if there was some grain of truth to what the detective said? She knew Link had been struggling with something that caused him grief, but because he was so inept at communicating his deeper feelings and she did not press hard enough to make him open up, she could now only guess at what his problem had been. What if her inaction had helped in driving him away? What if he cared nothing about their friendship anymore and wanted to put distance between them?

Each time those niggling thoughts had slipped into her mind she slapped them away as one would a few flies, but they were beginning to wear her down. She didn't want to believe it, couldn't believe it! Just a couple words from him would banish those troublesome thoughts for once and all, but such a thing was beyond her grasp. She wondered with a sinking heart if she would ever hear the sound of his voice again.

~O~

Link's fury consumed him like a wildfire tearing through the woods, eating away at his being like acid. He pounded his fists against the wall, shouting, screaming and moaning. Though he wore warm winter gloves which offered some cushion from the blows, he wouldn't have cared much if his hands were as bruised as his throbbing, jumping heart seemed to be. Perhaps then he wouldn't feel it so much… He lowered his head and shut his eyes firmly, yet the hot tears still escaped and coursed down his chilled cheeks.

The blood in his veins still ignited, he moved toward the boxes piled carelessly on one side of the room, grunting as he kicked at them viciously. Several boxes were packed with dusty bottles that had probably at one time contained illegal liquor; he remembered coming across them in his search earlier but had had no use for them then. Now he yanked them out and heaved them against the wall, screaming deep, agonizing yells from the bottom of his lungs. But he couldn't summon even the slightest satisfaction in the destruction he caused. He wished the crooks were there and he could throw the glass at them instead.

Within a few minutes, the shards of several dozen bottles lay scattered on the floor and Link was spent. His breaths were raspy after so many bitter cries that none could hear. His heart pounded and his head felt light. Stumbling toward his mattress, he all but fell onto it and clumsily pulled the blankets over himself. Mercifully, sleep claimed him, freeing him for that little while from the harshness of his situation.

When he awoke later in the day, his mouth was dry, his throat sore from yelling. He went to the bathroom to take a drink, glimpsing himself barely in the cracked glass which had been gray with dust and grime before he'd wiped it away. His eyes were red-rimmed, his face pinched with hunger and the creases of a deep frown, his hair was matted and in much need of a trim, and blue veins stood out on his forehead. Loathing what he saw in the mirror, he shifted his gaze swiftly sideways.

He trembled with exhaustion even as he stooped to satisfy his thirst and thus as soon as he was finished he returned to his mattress. Without the strength to engage in any physical activity and with thoughts that threatened to throw him into a frenzy again, he pulled out the journal. For a couple of minutes he stared at the last thing he had written before his captors had interrupted his musings. He had no interest in finishing the earlier sentence. In swift, angry strokes, he wrote of the crooks and their capture of his fair sister.

_If they harm Aryll, if they so much as touch her, I will kill them. It matters not that I am locked up in here. Even if I have to dig my way out of here, I will get out and find them. If I have to traverse the world and beyond I will do it to find them. If they hurt her, I swear I will kill them with my bare hands._

He choked on a sob in his throat.

_I should never have let her move to the city to be with me! She should still be with her adopted family. They are good people and I know they care for her, so much so that when she begged them to, they agreed to let her come live with me. But the city is no place for a sweet, innocent girl like her. I wish we'd never been reunited if she would only be safe then. The joy of that moment is not worth it now! I should never have told Zelda I was searching for her. If not for her and her family, Aryll and I might still be apart and she would be safe…_

_But no, I can't blame Zelda. She acted from the purest motives. I'm sure she only wanted to make me happy. Ever since I first laid eyes on her I think she's always wanted only the best for me. She is the kind of friend one meets only once in a lifetime…if one is lucky. I've seen many girls in my work, rich and poor, spoiled and sweet, but not one of them is like Zelda. I've had to wonder what makes her the way she is? Why does she care so much for those around her? She's been my friend since that first day we met, even when I was rude and surly and when I tried to push her away._

_I've wanted to speak to her, to tell her what more I wish I could give her…but I've always lost my nerve and the words would stick in my throat. How can I ask her to give me her heart when I'm afraid I'll break it one day? I think… No, I _know_ I love her and that's why I can't do it. I've thought about one day asking her to marry me, but I cannot. What kind of husband would I be? I am afraid that I would only be a disappointment to her. And the thought of having children together terrifies me. I cannot remember my own father and I was shifted around so much when I was growing up that I never had a good male role model. What terrible sort of father would I be?_

_I am a cad. I've seen the way she looks at me sometimes, hopeful, expectant, impatient…and very sweetly feminine. I know what she wants me to say but I am a coward. I know I'm not worthy of her. Her parents probably think the same thing. Her father took me into his study that one night and wanted to know my intentions but I failed even that. I suppose he needn't worry now about my possible spoiling of Christmas for her. _

_I don't know that I'll ever get out of here alive. The gangsters haven't given me any food and they won't let me go unless I agree to help them, or until I die, whichever happens first. Zelda's better off without me anyway…right? She can find someone else who will be better for her than I. But still…I don't want her to be sad on my account, as I know she will be. If anything happens to me, I want her to have this book, that she may know what I never had the courage to tell her._

He continued to scrawl out the anguished cries of his heart until his hand was so stiff and cramped that he couldn't hold the pencil any longer. The pages were blotched with a few fallen tears which he hadn't succeeded in diverting.

~O~

The heavy clouds gave way, blanketing the city in a fresh three inches of snow. To Zelda, sitting on a bench in Oracle Park, the miniscule falling flakes seemed like a curtain between her and the world. The fur collar of her coat was pulled closely around her neck, her gloved hands clenched together around her pocketbook on her lap. Her chin quivered and occasionally she bit at her lip. She stared up at the magnificent tree that she had earlier admired with Link and his sister, her eyelashes dewy with melted snow and moist, shiny streaks running down both sides of her nose.

The electric bulbs on the Christmas tree glowed like multicolored stars even through the snow and the gloom of early nightfall. The light in turn bounced and shimmered on the tinsel and other ornaments draped over and dangling from the sharply scented branches. Crowning the tree was a many-pointed star that shone and glimmered enough to rival a fragment of the sky itself. However, that top-most decoration was flickering, likely a result of some faulty wiring, and it seemed to be getting worse.

_Link, where are you?_ she thought. She was almost mesmerized by the failing electrical star, feeling that she, like it, had a tenuous grip on reality. _Why don't you come home? This was supposed to be such a happy time for us! I wanted to make it something special for all of us, for you and Aryll now that you're finally together, because Christmas is coming, and because this year has been kinder to you than the last. Why did you have to spoil it?! Oh, Link… _From her eyes fell more warm tears in sharp comparison to the softly frozen flakes which fell everywhere around her. _Please…just come home! All I want is to see you again…_

She was completely on her own in the clearing which held the Christmas tree. She'd seen but a few people in the park as she'd traversed the path, but by the time the fall of night was complete and the cold crept in with the snow, everyone else hurried back home or to a warm place to eat. But Zelda didn't want to leave yet, even if she was feeling a little frosty around the edges. Her eyes rose to the tree's star again; it flickered and went out. She held her breath for those few seconds until it lit up again. She found herself wishing that it would stay strong, shining for her like a beacon in a dark, seemingly endless blizzard.

_I am lost without you, Link. I need you so!_

The star went dark and thus it remained. Zelda gave another sob, her eyes spilling over. Her heart throbbed and ached and she couldn't bear it anymore.

A figure detached itself from the darkness and blowing snow, nearing her. "There you are!" came the concerned voice belonging to same.

Tiny crystalline flakes mixed with her tears as she glanced up at her friend. "H-hello, Aryll," she said. She tried to smile, but it was a very pathetic attempt and she merely broke down again.

The other girl sat on the bench and put her arm around Zelda. Her tone, while still much saddened, bore some relief as she said, "I've been looking for you and I thought I might find you here."

Zelda blew her tender red nose and in turn put her other arm around her friend. Her eyes shifted to the top of the Christmas tree, where the star almost invisible in the gloom except that the other lights showed it up but slightly.

"Do you remember what you were doing at this time last year?"

Peering through the snow, Aryll beheld her friend's woeful expression. She was always a sympathetic crier and since she had the same sorrow, her eyes were almost immediately prickling with tears.

After a moment she replied, "I guess I was still going to school, waiting for Christmas break and planning to go to a party with my friends."

"Link and I spent nearly every evening together after he'd finished with work. He didn't have much money to spend, so we would usually go to places that didn't cost anything, but that didn't matter to me. We were… I was at least… just happy just to spend the time together."

The golden-headed girl nodded and sniffled. "That's why this place is important to you, right?"

"This park is wh-where we first met, really," Zelda said and paused to take a quick, gasping, sobbing breath. "I mean, I saw him very briefly in the department store but it was here that I learned his name and got to know him a little bit. I will never…forget that day…"

She leaned against her friend as a new wave of grief overtook her. The young ladies huddled together on that bench; each was all the other had against the cold that crept through to their bones and the sorrow which wrenched their hearts.

"_I miss him so much_, Aryll!"

Heretofore it had been Zelda who seemed the strong one, standing resolutely against Zauz's pessimism, keeping up their hopes even though her tears, and always being nearby to help the younger girl cope. Seeing her so spiritless and disheartened gave Aryll a funny feeling that began in her stomach and spread to her chest. She wanted to help, to do something, anything, but in the face of the situation she felt as infinitesimal and ineffectual as a single drop of water against the whole ocean.

"I know…" she whispered. She would have given anything to have her brother back in their tiny kitchen, complaining about how one side of the toast was burnt, how hot the tea was, or how expensive bacon was.

Zelda reached over and took her friend's hand, squeezing the gloved fingers. "I…I always care too much about everything. I was the kind of child who wanted to bring home nearly every animal I saw, stray or otherwise. We acquired several pets that way."

"Cats…or dogs?"

"There was a cat once, but mostly it was other things like lizards, turtles, birds, and things. We lived in the kinds of places where I could easily find those sorts of animals. And I loved them so…m-much. I was inconsolable when they died," she said, her words catching on a fresh sob.

"Zelda, don't!" Aryll pleaded, even as her own heart gave a twist. "If it hurts that much, you don't have to tell me!"

The elder of the two shook her head. "No, I want to. I want to explain so you'll _know_." She wept again and blew her nose. "Before I met Link, I had a boyfriend. He was very nice to me, he t-took me to all kinds of places, plays and clubs and concerts, and it seemed like we were always having fun together… You know, before we came back to the city to stay, we moved around a lot because of my daddy's business. Anyway, my…boyfriend often managed to come to the same area as we were in, claiming that either he couldn't be apart from me that long, or because he had arranged to come on business."

Aryll opened her mouth and shut it again, knowing that it was not the time to interrupt.

"He was about three or four years older than me, and he said he was on the ground floor of a lucrative investment business. Occasionally he would rattle on about his work, using terms I did not understand. But I thought it was all very interesting and grown up."

She paused, releasing a great sobbing sigh. Aryll squeezed her hand and she returned it, her fingers clenching around her friend's. The snow had not abated in the slightest, thousands of flakes continuing to land delicately around them, wrapping them up in a blanket of quiet.

"On my eighteenth birthday he proposed to me. Of course I said yes. I loved him so and had been dreaming of marriage for months. He wanted to get married right away, but my mother wanted me to have a grand wedding with all the trimmings. I was torn between his preference and my mother's, which partway matched my own dream of having it in the Temple of Time."

The golden-haired girl caught her breath and nodded understandingly. Nearly every girl in the whole of Hyrule and even some in the countries beyond dreamed of a fairy-tale wedding in the nearly legendary Temple of Time. It was said that when a man and woman said their solemn vows under the serene gaze of the giant statue of the golden goddesses, their life together thereafter was richly blessed. Thus, the temple was in such demand that it was booked up for at least a year in advance.

"I told him everything. I tried to convince him that the time we'd have to wait would just give us more opportunity to plan our life together, but that I wanted to start it off in the best way. It took some doing, but he eventually grudgingly agreed, perhaps because I was so set on it. We were to wait a year and be married in the Temple of Time. It seemed like such a long time to me, but my mother said it was only enough time to arrange everything."

She swallowed thickly, remembered everything as though it had happened just days earlier. Her mother had been in a flurry of activity, from spending days on picking out linens, silverware, and food, arranging for the flowers and dozens of white doves, to the selection of design of the wedding dress and meticulously overseeing its creation. Zelda was to wear her mother's veil with just a couple of modifications made to it.

"I was so h-happy… I felt like I could go on forever on the strength of those feelings. The only thing that clouded it was Dad's concern. Through his many business connections he tried to find out more about my fiancé, yet no one knew him or of the firm he was supposed to represent. He told me all this one day… I remember I was having a fitting of my wedding gown and I was still wearing it when he asked to speak to me alone. He was so solemn and frowning when he asked me to think carefully about what I was doing and what kind of man I was going to marry. He wanted to forbid the marriage, except I was of age.

"I believed so strongly in my fiancé and knew there had to be some sort of mistake. I told Dad so. And I went to my fiancé and have him clear up the whole misunderstanding. He told me his firm was actually owned by a completely different entity that bore another name, hence the confusion. I was so easily satisfied. I felt like I'd known him so long that I knew everything about him. My parents had liked him pretty well before Daddy's doubts… And he was nice enough to the boys, giving them a few rupees for comics whenever they were bothering us. A-although the boys would make faces and call him 'the stinky man' behind his back."

The younger girl chuckled, a sound which was half strangled in her throat due to the emotion that overwhelmed her. "Oh, I'm sorry!"

"That's all right," Zelda replied, glancing over at her friend. "Where was I? Oh yes… He asked me to forget the wedding plans and elope with him. I refused, but he kept hounding me the next few days, saying we could be rid of all the fuss and bother if we got married right away. I told him that I wanted my dream wedding. Then he suggested that if we were to elope right away we could still have our wedding when the time came. I was weakening and he knew it. His suggestion seemed like the perfect answer, how I could satisfy him and still have the ceremony my mother and I wanted. I finally agreed and we planned to elope that night. It's the kind of romantic thing you might read about in two-rupee novels, don't you think?"

Aryll wasn't sure if that had been a rhetorical question or not. She understood what her friend was talking about, however, and she gave her an extra squeeze of the hand.

"I couldn't sit still for how excited I was. I packed my little suitcase and hid it under my bed, ready for my departure. I was on pins and needles waiting for the prearranged hour. We were staying in a whole suite of rooms in a grand hotel in Labrynna City at the time; he was going to meet me at the servants' entrance and we would slip off together. Somehow my little brothers got wind of something going on and came to pester me about it. They wouldn't leave me alone, and their governess was sick with the same cold Zill still had, so they pretty much had free rein of the place.

"Then the time came and I knew I couldn't keep him waiting. The boys were still hanging onto me as I put on my coat. Zill wanted to know where I was going and Joel wanted to carry my suitcase, though he was probably hoping I had some comic books for him inside. I told them to go back to their room, promising I'd bring them each several comic books, and finally they went. I was so nervous as I slipped through to the back entrance. My fiancé had grown impatient and come inside. He was frowning heavily and hardly looked happier when I appeared. He hurried me out to the hall and I was breathless with fear and excitement.

"We'd gone out to the hall and the coast was clear. Then we heard a voice and I felt a tug at my coat. 'Don't go, Zellie!' Zill pleaded. He and Joel had seen us go out and followed us. Zill was crying and Joel demanded to know where the comic books were. I tried to quiet them and make them go back inside but that only made them louder. Joel looked askance at us and asked, 'Why are you going off with the stinky man?' He asked it in such an impish way, yet with an entirely innocent look on his face. I wasn't sure how to make them go back peaceably and I was so afraid that we'd be caught."

She paused long enough to take another breath and release it, exhaling a soft cloud which was soon lost to the snow.

"After Joel called him that, he slapped my brother. I could only stare for a long moment as the red mark spread over the side of Joel's face. He ran back inside. I turned to my fiancé, whose face I had not noticed before was a dark red. I accused him of cruelty to my little brother. All the while Zill was tugging at my hand, and he was so pitiful with his nose running worse than ever because of his cold, and his little mouth quivering. My fiancé told me I had a decision right then, to choose whether I wanted to go with him or to 'wipe the noses of a couple of little brats.'

"'They haven't done anything to you!' I flashed back at him. 'You didn't have to hit him!' After that he stormed off. I would have run after him except for the hands which clung to me and my coat. I went back inside with my brothers and got them calmed down again. They wouldn't forget about the comic books and wanted to go out right away and get them, but I told them we would have to wait until the next day. I couldn't stop thinking about my fiancé though. We were supposed to be married that night, but after that I didn't know what I was supposed to do.

"As soon as I could, I left the hotel and went to my fiancé's rented room. He wasn't there, so I started looking in all the places he might be, mostly the spots we liked to go to together. I located him at last in a cocktail bar, and had been expecting to find him alone, drowning his sorrows. A woman was latched onto his arm, and he was talking to a man who had another woman at his side. I stopped short. They hadn't seen me but I was near enough to hear everything they said. I didn't mean to eavesdrop at first, I was so surprised and stunned by what I saw. I suppose I did not want to understand it at first, but their words erased any doubt in my mind.

"The other man was furious with my fiancé because he'd left me. He was saying, 'I've wasted enough dough on you to get you hitched up to that naïve little heiress. Get back out there and don't louse it up this time!'

"'What my brother is saying,' said the woman on my fiancé's arm as she leaned over to adjust his tie, 'Is that you only come back with a legal, binding marriage certificate in your dirty little hand. That certificate is all we need to get a hand in the Harkinian millions. She's worth her weight in gold, wouldn't you say?'

"'You're all I want,' my fiancé replied, leaning his face near hers. 'You're all I've ever wanted. I'll do anything to give you what you want, Veran.'

"Her tone was sultry as she said, 'Then do it right this time, you fool!' It looked like she was pinching his hand.

"The other woman, who had before been quietly sipping her drink, glanced up, saw me and pointed. 'Who's that looking at us?' The others turned and my fiancé blanched. I knew then that he hadn't really cared about me…the way I'd cared…about him. I felt that my love had all been for nothing…that he all the time he was betraying me for another. I couldn't face them and so I turned and fled. He caught up to me at the entrance, pulling me aside and trying pull the wool over my eyes again.

"'What you heard in there? It wasn't what you think it was. We were… Those friends of mine… They're actors, you see. I was helping them rehearse for a play,' he said. The lies slipped so easily off his tongue. Everything he'd ever told me had been false.

"'I know exactly what it was!" I hissed back at him. I was so angry that I hadn't had a chance to start crying yet. He took my elbow and tried to pull me back inside 'where we could talk privately.' 'Let go of me! Don't touch me!' I said to him, raising my voice and trying to struggle from his grasp. He grabbed my arm so hard for a moment that I thought he might hit me or something, but both the doorman and a policeman were standing nearby so I think he didn't dare be so rough. He loosened his grip and I got away. He was still pleading with me as I asked the doorman to get me a cab and as I climbed inside. I refused to look back at him as I rode away."

"Oh, Zelda…" Aryll gasped. "I…I never knew. That must have been so awful!"

She took a long shuddering breath and mopped at her face again. "And that's why I'm so attached to my family. They really saved me from a terrible fate. I was sure all my friends were laughing at me for being so naïve and foolish. I was devastated. I just wanted to wither away and die. But my family was still there and they helped me heal. My brothers made me laugh, my mother loved me with hugs and by spoiling me with all the things I like, and my dad—bless his heart—didn't know what to do for me, but he carved away time from his business to spend with me.

"I didn't ever want to get close to another man, not ever. I decided I just wanted to stay with my family and spend all my cares on them. And when Mother got sick and the doctors wanted her to try so many different treatments, I was just glad to help wherever I could. Then she got tired of moving around like a gypsy, she said, and one of the doctors agreed that we should come back here instead of moving around all the time. I think that's what really made the sting of that experience fade. It didn't hurt so when I was helping and caring for others.

"…And then I met Link," she said, with fondness and despair warring in her tone. "He was everything my fiancé hadn't been. He made it pretty obvious he didn't much like my brothers, but he was still good to them and wasn't afraid to give them what-for when they misbehaved. He was a gentleman and always insisted on paying for our food and drink and those few movies we saw, even though he could scarcely afford any of it. …It was as if he'd forgotten how to smile. I found myself caring for him, despite everything. The world had been so cruel to him that he didn't want to show that he still had a heart and buried it deep, deep within himself. I wanted to make him care again."

"You did, Zellie. Oh, you did! He's changed since last Christmas. He still grumbles and frowns, but he laughs easier and thanks me for my cooking most of the time. You've helped him find a new meaning in life…and hope. And you've probably made him consider the future. I think that's why he's been acting so strangely lately."

The near silence of the falling snow enveloped them as Zelda considered those words. A strand of lights on the Christmas tree were flickering on and off slowly, as if someone were playing with an electrical switch. She shivered, remembering how cold she was.

"Have you…" Aryll began quietly. She paused and considered the best way to put her question. "Have you told Link about… well, you know…"

"No…" the other young lady admitted. "I… I was afraid to. I was afraid he would look at me differently, that he might think of me as something cast off by another man…"

"You're no one's cast-off, Zellie. And I'm sure he wouldn't even consider it. Actually, he'd probably want to find that miserable excuse of a man and give him a good sock in the puss."

A wisp of a smile drifted across Zelda's lips. "You're probably right. That sounds like the kind of thing a man would do… And I would love him for the thought at least."

She trembled again and she realized she had no idea how long they'd been sitting there. She hadn't paid attention to the chimes of the big clock which were muffled by the snow anyway. Her eyelids were heavy, weighed down by exhaustion and so many spilled tears, and she found that she couldn't stop shivering.

"Let's go home, Aryll."

They rose and quit the park, leaving behind footprints which would be well filled with snow by the morning. The Christmas lights blinked one more time and then remained dark. With the luminescence also went the warmth, and the huge evergreen tree was soon swathed in frosty white.

* * *

_I kinda borrowed the name of this chapter from a certain chapter in _Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney._ But I wanted something with "despair" in it and this fit so well. So if you've ever played that game, you'll probably think it seems a little familiar... _

_Yep, I decided to give Zelda a little bit of backstory too. Now, I know her explanation was probably more detailed than it would be if someone was just sobbing out a story like that. But I figured that writing it out with some details merely served to add to this tale. What are your thoughts on it?_

_And that's it for this year. See you in the next one!_

* * *

12-30-2019 ~ Published (7,907 words)


	7. Decision

**Keeping Hope for Christmas - by Pseudo Twili**

Chapter 7: Decision

_Dec. 15. It snowed heavily last night. I can no longer see anything from the window because of the drifts piled up against the glass. And it is cold in here too. I paced around the room to try and warm myself, but I couldn't keep at it. Curse this weakness! My stomach gnaws at my insides and my mind is fuzzy. If only I could find some bit of food in here! Urgh… I must put it out of my mind. Thinking about it only makes me hunger more!_

_The gangsters left Aryll's blouse in here yesterday. I hated looking at it. She is in their filthy hands! The thought alone makes me rage again. I wanted to destroy her blouse so I would not be reminded constantly, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. So I just hid it away in one of the boxes. Sweet little Aryll. I…just need to know she's all right._

_I'm glad Zelda's safe anyway. I haven't told them anything, and they won't so easily get to her. I would just find a way to kill them more slowly if they harmed her too. She'd better not come poking her pretty nose into this mess. I don't want her getting hurt. If she was… I don't know what I'd do. _

_What's she doing now, I wonder? Perhaps going to work at the clinic. I can imagine her trotting through the snow on her way over there… Cold and snow… It reminds me of that walk we took in the park with the first snow, and all those times we walked the streets last year. She was always happy and alert. She'd be watching the other people, pointing something out to me, and laughing behind her hand at something funny, but I was only watching her. What made her want to spend all her time with me? I know I'm not the best fellow out there. I have a bad temper and Aryll tells me I'm as grumpy as an old bear. So why does she care so much?_

_I thought it might be easier to take my own life before I'd do anything for those crooks…but I couldn't bring myself to do that either, not while they have Aryll. And then there's Zelda… She looked like she was ready to cry when I told her my grandma died. I can imagine the look on her face if she were to learn of my death. I won't do that to her. And I know too…it would be a grievous wrong._

_I remember the old priest from the temple. I wandered in there one day, hungry, wet, cold, desperate, and without a rupee or a place to stay for the night. I was barely fifteen. It had been a couple of months since I ran away from the last place I'd been staying and winter was just around the corner. I saw the golden cup on one of the side tables and imagined that it was overflowing with bread and meat and other good things to eat. I waited until it was late and everyone had gone home. _

_I looked around just to make sure everyone was gone, and then I took it. I grabbed the golden cup and stuffed it under my ragged coat. Glancing around again to make sure no one had seen me, I avoided the empty stares of the statues in the alcoves. I walked quickly toward the exit, only to find that the doors were closed and an old man stood in front of them. He looked at me and I glared back, but the guilt must have been evident on my face. _

_"__Are you in such a hurry to leave the goddesses' company?" he asked._

_I mumbled something, I don't recall what. I tried to dodge around him but he was in the perfect spot and did not move. He wasn't any taller than me but I couldn't know what sinewy strength those loose robes of his might hide. _

_"__Do you need help, son?"_

_"__No," I replied, and I recall now that my infernal pride was showing. Zelda has chided me about that._

_"__No? Ah, well I was going to ask next if you wanted to join me for a hot bowl of soup. But I suppose I shall have to eat alone now," he said, and as he smiled the wrinkles on his face moved._

_I stopped trying to get around him and put one hand over my painfully empty stomach. I was as hungry then as I am at this moment. I knew if I could get away with the cup I might be able to sell it, but it would not immediately put food in my belly._

_"__Oh? Have you reconsidered?" he asked, quirking an eyebrow at me. "I live around the side of the main cathedral. Follow me if you like." He pointed to another doorway and started off in that direction, but then he turned back to me. "Don't you think you should leave the cup here, son?"_

_"__What c-cup?" I stuttered stupidly._

_His easy smile faded as he looked at me. "That cup belongs here, son. While it remains on these premises there is no harm done. Won't you return it where it belongs?"_

_He gave me a long look and then retreated into his quarters. Alone again, I pulled the cup out from my coat and looked at it. My conscience pricked at me like a thousand points from Grandma's well-used pincushion. What would she think of her grandson stealing from the temple of the goddesses? My mind screamed out to me to keep it and run, to leave the temple far behind, but it was as if my feet were frozen to the floor of the vestibule. Then I knew I couldn't take it. The shame over what I'd done made me want to hide myself. My cheeks were wet. I ran back, put the cup on the table and slipped out the front doors._

_As I rounded the corner, a voice called out to me, "Wait!" It was the old priest._

_Guiltily believing that he had changed his mind about the charge of theft, I turned and ran. The street was dark and my panicked mind just told me to run. I did not look where I was going, stumbled off the curb and fell flat on my face. It knocked the breath out of me and for a few seconds I dizzily tried to get up. His footsteps came up behind me and he placed a hand on my shoulder. I flinched from his touch. I suppose it was a reflex more than my fear of him._

_"__I thought we were going to have some soup together, son," he said, his tone amiable. "Did you forget? Or perhaps you are doubtful of my cooking?"_

_He helped me up and looked me over, seeming to satisfy himself that I was only shaken. I couldn't meet his eye. _

_"__If it'll ease your mind, I must truthfully admit that my housekeeper made the soup before she left for the day. You see, my cooking is that bad!" He chortled ruefully. "My housekeeper, though…I've never seen a woman who knows as many recipes as she has in her head! Flapjacks, casseroles, steaks, lamb, pot roast, potatoes, stews, breads and pastries…" he said, rambling on. _

_He'd come after me without an extra jacket or anything, and he shivered, putting his hands around his arms. He invited me to come with him again and then went inside. I stood on the sidewalk, looking first at his retreating back and then the opposite direction. The street was dark save for a few streetlights. My stomach gave a painful twist. I had nowhere to go and I could already feel the bite of the cold night creeping into my bones. I followed the old priest._

Link barely touched his pencil to the paper again when he heard someone unbolting the door. Fumbling, he couldn't quite maneuver himself off the mattress enough to get his book well underneath as he'd done before. Instead, he jammed it against the wall and folded the blanket over it. Then he laid down his head and closed his eyes all but a crack. Through the lashes, he saw Daupple and Griham enter. Their leader was not with them.

"Wake up, you!" Griham demanded, toeing Link roughly with his shiny two-tone shoe.

The prisoner grabbed for the foot, attempting to unbalance the man to whom it belonged, but Griham danced back quickly.

"Why you lousy…" he began.

Then Daupple stepped closer. "Nice try, pal. Enough playing. The boss sent us here to get you. You'd better be ready to help us or your sister'll be the one who's sorry."

Link flew up and assumed a half-crouched, half-sitting position, his bloodshot eyes alight with fury. Daupple put his hand in his pocket and withdrew the same shiv Link had seen before. He snapped it open and pointed it at the captive, an ugly little smile twisting his lips.

"Don't you try anything else!"

Griham also grinned, a sly, repulsive action. "Now, what's it gonna be? Playing ball with us… or a nasty fate for your sister? I can think of so many ways to make her scream…"

Link balled his fists and bit into his lip so hard that he later found blood in his mouth. He made another movement like he wanted to scramble to his feet, and Daupple waved the blade a little closer to his face.

"You touch her and I'll kill you," the prisoner promised through gritted teeth. "I'll hunt you down to the ends of the earth if I have to!"

The two crooks exchanged amused looks. "Big words from a little man," Daupple said.

"Try it and you'll find yourself with a deadly case of lead poisoning," chuckled Griham as he fiddled with the semi-automatic which he'd pulled from his shoulder holster.

"I'd just slit your pipes," added the other crook, flipping his shiv in his hand and making a wide slashing motion.

"You ain't got a prayer. Now do you throw in with us or does your pretty little sister have a date with my friend here?"

Link swallowed and wet his lips. He couldn't let them hurt Aryll! But on the other hand, if he were to agree to their demands, then he would have to betray Zelda and her family by helping the gangsters rob their home. He could not in all good conscience do either and yet he had to make a choice. His empty stomach knotted and his head ached as he grappled with the agonizing, seemingly insurmountable dilemma.

As they were forced to wait, the malicious mirth of the two crooks faded as frowning impatience took its place. "We ain't got all day!" Daupple grumbled. "What's it gonna be?"

The prisoner couldn't even look up at his captors. He felt as though his heart and the rest of his insides were being squeezed together and he could hardly breathe. The world around him seemed to be falling apart, leaving nothing solid for him to latch onto. What was he supposed to do?!

"Cat got your tongue?" Griham demanded. "C'mere! I'll loosen it for you!"

He reached down and grabbed Link by the lapels of his topcoat. The crook dealt him a swift, smarting blow across the mouth. The small shock of the slap brought Link to his senses. He struggled in Griham's grasp, lashing out at the man. The gangster again jumped back and out of his range.

His tired eyes smoldering with contempt for his captors, he looked up at them and said, "I won't do anything for you until I see Aryll myself, and she'd better be unharmed." He released a shaky breath. "You can tell that to your boss and see how he likes it!"

The faces of the other two men grew two shades darker, curses falling from their lips. Their hands went again to the weapons they'd put away. Griham moved toward Link like he wanted to grab and throttle him, but the prisoner's eyes were warily upon him and the former didn't dare get near again.

"You sap!" Daupple growled. "D'you know what the boss will do to you for that?"

The young man didn't know, and in his present circumstances, cared even less so long as they left his sister out of it. He gauged the expressions of the two who stood over him and he guessed that they were shaking at the thought of having to report back to Dorffman. This realization caused his lips to quirk in a satisfied little smile.

The gangsters cursed him and called him a few more unsavory names, but Link said nothing more. He'd been so wrought up that both that and the cold were taking its toll on him. He was exhausted and wanted to save his strength. Daupple and Griham tired of taunting him and marched from the room in high dudgeon. However, when they were just on the other side of the door and about to close it, a voice from without interrupted them.

"What are these…things doing here? This is just like you to leave them sitting here. Remove them at once!"

Griham snapped back, "What are we supposed to do with them? Throw them outside and have the bulls grab 'em?"

"Put them in there with him," the other voice replied coolly. "Just get them out of my sight!"

Grumbling, both Daupple and Griham came back into the room long enough to dump a couple of valises and a sloppy bundle of clothing on the floor. The captive got up slowly to see what was going on, but the two crooks hardly gave him a sideways look before they walked out again. Link heard just a bit more of the antagonistic words between them and the newcomer before they closed the door fully.

"Are you here to check up on us, Vlaatin?!" Daupple demanded. "Did Dorffman send you?"

Griham added angrily, "Just 'cause you're his right-hand man doesn't mean you have to lord it over us!"

The third voice, apparently belonging to Vlaatin, replied evenly, "You two are fools. You wouldn't know a remlit if it came up and took a bite out of you."

"What's that supposed to mean?!" exclaimed Griham.

"I've skinned a man for saying a thing like that," Daupple muttered.

"You were trying to threaten him in there, weren't you? Didn't I tell you it wouldn't do you any good? He's the stubborn sort, you can tell just by looking. Didn't I tell the boss that too? Now we implement _my_ plan. The boss has another heist planned and this is what we'll do…"

That was all Link managed to hear before they shut and bolted him in again. He looked out of the small window in the door and saw them in the other room, but their voices were a low rumble that he could not decipher. He sagged as he let out the breath he'd been holding, his mind oscillating between his worry for Aryll, doubt that he'd done the right thing, and dreadful curiosity as to what the gangsters were planning. His mind worked itself into a lather as he fretted, and as he cast his eyes about for something, anything to distract him, he saw the things the crooks had dumped in the middle of the floor.

He untied the bundle wrapped sloppily in newspaper first, handling it carefully lest it was a booby trap. The idea was not entirely plausible, considering that it had apparently just been sitting in the other room and no one had paid any attention to it until Vlaatin objected, but he didn't trust the crooks any further than he could throw them with both hands tied behind his back.

The newspaper fell away and he just sat there as he stared at a few of his belongings. Then he turned to the two valises and pulled out their contents in a frenzy. Within a couple of seconds, everything he owned lay in little heaps around him, leaving him to look down at the collection as if it was both the most wonderful and horrible thing he could face. Most of it was his clothing—shirts, trousers, socks, shorts, long underwear, suspenders, ties, and his one other suit coat—and the rest were little things such as his shaving kit, toothbrush, hairbrush, a couple of books, a slim stack of comic books, and a few small keepsakes that reminded him of Zelda.

He fingered the cheap little plastic figure of a horse that he'd acquired at Star Island. He'd played a couple rounds at the shooting gallery and won the tiny horse as a prize, but when he'd offered it to Zelda, her fancy was already taken with the stuffed loftwings which were lined up on the shelves. So he'd played a few more rounds and won a loftwing for her. He pocketed the plastic horse, muttering that he might give it to Aryll later, but he wound up keeping it because it reminded him of a day spent with the girl whose smile warmed his heart.

Then he picked up a baseball, remembering that day the previous summer in which he and Zelda had taken her little brothers to the ballpark. In the third inning, the batter hit a foul ball in their direction and Link and the boys were amazed that she caught it. She merely insisted that she was afraid it was going to hit Zill, who doggedly insisted afterward that he would have liked to have been struck if it meant that he could keep the ball. He and Joel kept up a running argument for the rest of the game and on the way home over which of them Zelda should give the ball to. In the end, she gave it to neither of her brothers but instead placed it in Link's hands. And since they hadn't managed to get any of the ballplayers' signatures, she had signed it herself, as a little joke. Now her cursive was smudged and hardly readable to anyone who did not know what it originally said.

Suddenly his eyes widened and his jaw tightened. He pawed through everything, peered into the valises, lifted the newspaper and shook everything out. He did this not once, not twice, but three times in such a panicked frenzy that he barely remembered to breathe. After completing the third search, he sat back and placed a hand over his thrumming heart. In the same dresser drawer which had obviously been emptied he'd also kept a card which Zelda had given him on his birthday, complete with her signed name at the bottom. He was afraid that if the crooks had found it they would use it against him. However, the card had been secreted under the drawer paper and thus he could only hope the gangsters had missed it in their search of his room.

He sucked new breaths into his lungs, feeling a bit lightheaded as his thoughts churned like a whirlpool. He did not have to wonder at the crook's method of entry to his home, as he had been missing his wallet and keys ever since first awakening in that room. What was the purpose in taking all of his possessions from his apartment? When they were there, did they also find Aryll there and kidnap her? Where were they keeping her? Was she in the same building as he was? He ached to know of her whereabouts.

He rose unsteadily to his feet and shuffled to the door, but it budged not even a millimeter to his weakened tugs at it. Then he returned to his mattress and burrowed beneath the blankets. Closing his eyes, he gave in at last to the emotions which had been festering since his arduous decision.

"Forgive me, Aryll…" he whispered, tears running down his cheeks.

~O~

Zelda went to the clinic again that day, even after her emotional breakdown in the park the evening before, and more than half a night spent awake with worries and tears. She tried to concentrate on her tasks, but time after time she found her mind wandering to her missing, dear friend. Over and over she remembered the words Zauz had spoken, trying to find some different meaning in them and in the mystery that surrounded Link's disappearance. She felt as though her tired mind was on the verge of some new realization, but as hard as she tried she could not grasp it.

As the afternoon was dimming and the shadows growing long, she returned some cleaning supplies to their proper closet and sighed, pressing the back of one hand to her forehead. She'd just finished cleaning and straightening up one of the operating rooms after an emergency appendectomy. The patient had come through quite well, the doctor said, but as she worked she'd been tormented with thoughts of Link and worries that he might need medical attention but was not able to get it. In her distraction, she had spilled her bucket of sudsy water twice and upset a tray of instruments. In picking up the items, she accidentally cut herself with a scalpel.

Then she had to return to the front desk but as she passed through the hall, the door to Nurse Anjean's office opened and that gray-haired lady stepped out. "Ah, there you are, Zelda. Please, come in."

The young woman obeyed and followed the head nurse into her cubicle, which was less than one tenth of the size of Zelda's bedroom. Anjean's workspace was clean, with white walls, a desk, two chairs, a large filing cabinet and a medicine chest. Anjean always insisted on tidy, well-ordered environs and her office was the leading example to everyone else; she never had more than a few files stacked neatly on her desk at a time, and her floor was always swept free of the ever-invading dust and dirt.

"What happened to your hand?" the elder lady asked, gesturing to the handkerchief wrapped around Zelda's palm.

She lifted her hand; she'd almost forgotten it completely. "It was a little accident," she replied.

Anjean nodded briskly and went to her medicine chest. "Unwrap it, dear. That mustn't go untreated."

She unwound the white material, which had a large red spot as she got near the source of the wound, wincing when the last part caught at her skin. Zelda looked down at the cut. It wasn't very deep, looking worse than it really was, but it throbbed as if with a heartbeat all its own. She held still while Anjean applied antiseptic and wrapped the palm of her hand with a length of clean bandage. Then the nurse bade her sit down and scrutinized the young lady for a few moments before speaking. She looked back, blinking tiredly.

"I want you to go home, Zelda."

The young woman started, her eyes going wide with dismay. She opened her mouth and spluttered, "B-but…!"

Anjean held up her own hand with its immaculately trimmed nails. "Don't worry, dear. You're not fired. I want you to go home and rest. I know you're dealing with a lot right now what with your friend being missing, but the fact is that your work has suffered these last few days and I can see the toll it is taking on you. Once you have things sorted out better, you may return. But not until after the new year, you understand?"

Blinking several times, Zelda stared back at her, unable to make the words spill from her tongue. Her work had been one thing she thought she could still hang onto despite everything else in her life that seemed to have been shaken like a snow globe in the hands of an over-zealous child. Leaving her job behind would be just one more unpleasant reminder of the changes that had so swiftly overtaken her. She couldn't stop coming to the clinic! What would she do with her time?! However, deep down she knew that the head nurse was right, and the realization made her heart heavy.

"I think you know it's best for now," Anjean said gently, quietly, her wrinkled face full of compassion for the girl. She put her hand on Zelda's shoulder. "I pray that you find your friend."

The young lady's eyes watered and she swallowed suddenly. "…Thank you," she whispered, and ushered herself out of the office.

Instead of heading directly home, she decided to go to the Library Skyloft, where Aryll worked, which was one of several such institutions scattered around Hyrule City. The air was brisk and cold, bearing a whisper of another snowstorm to come, but she was sufficiently bundled up against it. After exiting her cab, she paused at the bottom of the steps to the building, staring up at the two great stone birds that lifted their wings to the sky as they stood watch at either side of the stairs.

Every Hylian knew what loftwings looked like, but Zelda was one of the few who had actually seen them, up close and personal. Some of the history books told of an age so far in the past that it was mostly legend, a time in which the loftwings paired up with people and together they would take to the skies. Now, however, they lived completely in the wild but were also something of a sacred bird and never captured or put in zoos. She had seen a flock of them, each with a different hue of feathers, when she had been on an island far to the west, an island which was rumored to have fallen from the sky.

She glanced up at the heavens, wishing she had a loftwing of her own to take her up and away from her problems and heartache. Heaving a long, woeful sigh, she lowered her gaze and mounted the steps of the library. After inquiring at the front desk, she found her golden-haired friend shelving books in the reference section.

"Zelda! Oh, how you startled me!" Aryll exclaimed while somehow keeping her tone low. Her own usually sunny disposition was hiding behind clouds as thick as those outside. "…Is something wrong? Why are you here?"

The elder of the two sighed. "No, it's nothing really. Nurse Anjean just told me to go home." She frowned, as if she didn't fully understand it yet. "She said I need to get some rest…and in effect, get my problems sorted out."

"She's right, you know," the other girl said, putting one book back with a decided thunk. "You've been stretching yourself really thin lately. You don't think Link would like to see you this way, do you?"

Zelda's cheeks, already rosy from the cold, suddenly felt hot with indignation. Her lips dipped down at the corners. She had hoped Aryll would commiserate with her and offer her some consolation, but now it felt as though the younger girl was chastising her.

"I know he wouldn't!" she snapped back, raising her voice without quite realizing it. "But it's because of him that I feel this way! If he hadn't left us, then everything would still be all right!"

"You make it sound like you think he went missing on purpose," the other young lady countered, her own tone rising slightly.

Zelda could not truthfully admit that she believed that, but in all her pent-up frustration and grief she couldn't bring herself to admit it. "Well, what am I supposed to think? It seems to be the running theory for the police! Why doesn't he come home?!"

Aryll paused, drawing a thick tome close to her chest. "I can't believe you're saying that! You _know_ him!" She blinked rapidly a couple of times, her eyes growing moist. "You're the one who has told me so many times to always keep hope!"

A long moment of silence yawned between them as they held each other's heated gazes. Zelda could have told the other girl that she was so exhausted, that her nerves were in tatters, and that she was so afraid about Link's being missing that she could hardly think about anything else. She could have explained that the incessant doubts that had invaded her mind were making her wonder how much of a friend she really was. She could have simply said that she didn't want to argue with her friend and merely wanted comfort in her companionship. She did none of those things, however. Pressing her lips tightly together and turning on her heel, she marched out of the reference section and the library.

She refused to cry on her way home, even though the back of the cab was dark. She tried to blame Aryll for the angry feelings which boiled up within her, but she knew the argument had been more her fault as the other girl's. She was ashamed to have behaved thus, a feeling which mingled with her ire and despair and made her worse off than before. She arrived at her home, her mood darker than the coming night.

Techer met her at the door as usual and took her coat, but this time she hardly said two syllables to him. If he was miffed at her unaccustomed distance, he certainly didn't show it. Then, as she was crossing the foyer to the staircase, she heard a couple pairs of footsteps pounding down the hall toward her. Turning, she saw the expected cause of the commotion, her two little brothers. She held out her arms and braced herself for what she felt was an inevitable collision, but it never came. Zill and Joel ran behind her, clutching at the bottom of her trim jacket and peeking out on either side of her like the young miscreants they were.

"Don't let him get us, Zellie!" the younger boy gasped between breaths.

"He said he'd hang us up by our heels!" Joel exclaimed.

Both boys were a mite flushed after their exertion. Their faces betokened some little fear and the usual amount of mischievousness. They knew no one would dare lay a finger on them when they were protected by their big sister. Zelda, on the other hand, felt that her patience was just about nonexistent. She reached around, grabbed them each by their collars and dragged them around so she could see them better. They struggled and she found the task a bit more difficult than it had been in the past when her brothers were smaller. She winced a bit as she used her left hand, but she didn't care.

"What have you two done now?!" she demanded, torn between giving way to tears or to the irritability that bubbled up within her. "Come on, out with it!"

The boys wailed and protested, trying to squirm out of her grasp. She was about to give them a shake when someone else came scuttling down the hall and came to a sudden halt as he spotted his two culprits. He was the Harkinians' new chef, who had only been with them a few months since Gillian gave up her post to get married. He always accorded himself in his job in white uniform and chef's hat, the latter of which made the boys titter and whisper to each other about "the funny mushroom hat." Having served meals to royalty and elites in several countries, he knew how to make just about anything under the sun. Joel and Zill were further intrigued by him because he spoke with an accent and sometimes said things they did not understand.

"Pardon me, Miss Zelda," he said, panting a bit. "These boys, they have caused such trouble in my kitchen!"

She glared at her brothers, then sighed and lifted her eyes to the chef again. "What did they do?"

"They have put sugar in my salt! Now everything I have made is terrible!" he exclaimed mournfully, puckering his lips to further illustrate his point. He gave the young rascals a venomous look and they in turn tried to duck beneath their sister's sheltering shadow. "My beautiful dinner is ruined!"

Her turquoise eyes flashed down on them again, their accustomed softness veiled behind all the aggravated, despondent feelings which warred within her heart. "Why did you do that?" she pressed them.

But the little culprits couldn't seem to raise their respective gazes from the floor. Joel traced one foot over a line in the tiles and Zill sniffled.

"Well, since you've seen fit to ruin dinner for the rest of us, you can go without yours completely," she declared firmly. She felt as though she were on a steep slope and assigning such a punishment to her brothers was only increasing the speed of her descent, yet she couldn't seem to stop herself. Her tone was rife with anger and all her other complicated emotions. "Now go up to your room and stay there!"

She released the boys and they stood there for a moment more, protesting feebly and trying to lessen their consequence. However, when they glanced up at her face and glimpsed her terribly perturbed expression, they stilled their tongues and fled up the stairs.

Zelda turned to the chef again, barely able to keep herself in check. "I'm…very sorry about my brothers," she said, her tone almost mechanical at that point. "Perhaps you could just throw together something simple for dinner? I don't think it matters much…"

The man burst out indignantly with a few words from his own language. He stalked away, muttering about crazy Hylians and their indifference to fine food. Then Zelda too hastened upstairs, and upon closing the door to her room, she went over to her bed, threw herself down on it and began to weep deep gulping sobs that almost tore her heart in two.

Though the well of her sorrow seemed unfathomable, her tears eventually lessened. She raised herself slightly, realizing but not really caring that she'd left such a large damp spot upon the coverlet of her bed. Her face felt quite stiff from all the salt in her tears, her eyes felt scratchy and irritated, and her heart still throbbed as with an invisible wound. Why did she have to fall apart like that? She hated getting so overwrought with her emotions; it reminded her too much of the bad time she'd had after leaving her former fiancé behind.

She moved her eyes a bit, her gaze alighting on the scarlet stuffed loftwing that habitually leaned against her pillows. She reached out for it and held it before her, but she seemed to be looking past it to the day on which she'd acquired it. Her eyes welled up again and she suddenly smacked it, knocking the bird to the floor; it lay there, its beak on the carpet, its tailfeathers sticking up, and the wings still outstretched. She turned her head away and wept a few more tears, quieter and less violent than before. She couldn't forget the loftwing, however; a minute later she sat up, plucked it up from the floor and pulled it close to her chest.

A gentle knock sounded on the door and she did not answer immediately, as she was still too choked up with tears. A moment later, Aryll poked her head in, her eyebrows furrowed as she searched out and found Zelda. With one hand still on the doorknob, the younger girl barely intruded into the room. Her face was also flushed, her eyes moist.

"Do you mind if I come in?" she queried, her tone a bit uncertain as she met her friend's gaze.

Zelda didn't trust herself to speak just yet so she merely nodded. Then she realized that the gesture wasn't what she'd meant to imply at all, and she followed up with a shake of head. Aryll pursed her lips and almost ducked out again, unsure whether she was welcome or not.

"Come…in…Aryll," she said, gasping between each word. This time she made the effort to reach out to her, for she suddenly realized she didn't want to be alone anymore.

The girl with the golden curls slipped inside, her feet daintily eating up the carpet until she was next to the bed. She looked at her friend for a second and then she sat on the edge of the bed, still a little distance from Zelda.

"I'm… I'm sorry, Zellie. I shouldn't have spoken to you like that…"

The elder girl's eyes flew up to meet the dark green ones of her companion. "No, n-no! I'm sorry. I didn't m-mean what I said, Aryll, not a bit of it! I d-don't know what came over me! I just… I…"

She couldn't go on. She thought she'd used up her tears already, but more of them cascaded down her face in big, shining drops. Aryll scooted over and put her arms around her friend, her own heart aching to see her so. They remained like that for a while, weeping and drawing warmth and some small comfort from each other.

"I'm really sorry," Zelda said when she could control her voice again. "I did not mean to snap at you. I'm just so…_tired_." Her tone held much meaning with that single, emphatic word.

Aryll wiped at her own eyes and offered her dampened handkerchief to the other young lady, whose hanky was completely soaked. "We both spoke out of turn. But don't let's think of it anymore."

The elder girl gave her another squeeze and after a moment rose, went to her dresser and pulled out two clean, dry handkerchiefs. Trying to mop up tears that simply wouldn't cease, they sat in a silence which held no trace of the stiffness that had been between them before.

The knob of the outer door rattled, causing the eyes of both young women to jump thereto. A few seconds later there followed a sound of someone bumping against the door, and then some not quite hushed whispers coming from two separate throats.

"She's crying. You see? We shouldn't go in there!" hissed one voice.

The other retorted, "But Navi will just tell us to come right back! You know she will."

Zelda sniffled deeply and then called out, "Joel, Zill! What have I told you about listening behind doors?"

The whisperings ceased immediately, like a campfire doused with a whole pail of water. The door creaked open slowly at a reluctant touch, revealing two little rascals who were putting their best efforts into making their faces as doleful and repentant as possible. They came closer with tiny steps, alternating between looking at the floor and trying to gauge their sister's expression.

She was sorry she'd been so short with them earlier, but she waited to see what their mission was first. "Well, what is it?" she asked, raising her eyebrows slightly as her lip quivered.

Zill bumped his brother's shoulder and mumbled, "You tell her."

Joel jostled him right back. "No, you tell her."

Their eyes were on each other as they argued back and forth. They would have continued on that way if their sister did not interrupt them.

She sighed, sniffled and rolled her eyes. "Will you two stop that and just tell me?"

They snapped their mouths closed and seemed fascinated by rubbing their feet in the carpet. Finally, Joel said, "Navi said to apologize to you."

"She made us!" Zill interjected, as if their governess had required them each to write a million-word essay.

"Yeah, so, um… we're sorry, aren't we, Zill?" the elder boy said with some difficulty. He elbowed his brother.

The younger one jostled him in return, but he added his own mumbled apology. "Yeah… sorry, Zellie."

She considered the boys, not sure yet whether she should still be upset with them. She glanced at her friend, who was watching the proceedings with a look that wasn't quite so sad anymore. Zelda appreciated that her brothers had come to her to makes amends, even if it had been at the behest of another. She was too exhausted and emotionally wrung out to be angry with them.

"I accept your apology. And I'm sorry I shouted so," she said, but she didn't quite manage a smile for them. "Did Navi tell you to apologize to Zunari as well?"

The boys nodded glumly, as if they were asked to walk the plank. "Do we have to?" Zill whined.

Zelda nodded resolutely. "Yes, you do. You caused him a lot of trouble, you know."

"But it was just a little joke," Joel insisted, not realizing he was digging himself and his brother deeper into their hole. "He was supposed to laugh."

"Did he look like he was laughing?" she asked.

"Ummm…" Joel hemmed. He wanted to answer one way, but knew his sister would not accept it. Grudgingly, he said, "No?"

She nodded. "That's right. It isn't a good joke unless everyone sees the fun in it."

"Zellie?" ventured the younger boy, plying her with large, innocent eyes. "After we 'pologize to him, can't we have something to eat? We're awfully hungry."

"Hmm, I'll think about it," she replied. She already knew what she would tell them, but she just wanted to withhold it for a little bit longer. "How did you two get down to the kitchen without Navi, anyway?"

After more hemming and hawing and running their feet back and forth, the boys admitted that their governess had left them for a few minutes with precise instructions to do their schoolwork in her absence. The mischief makers had other ideas, naturally. As soon as she'd gone into the next room and closed the door, they jumped up from their seats and leaned up against the door. They heard her giving her number to the operator; her sister, who lived far away, was sick and she was trying to make arrangements to find help for her. This left her rather preoccupied and was an excellent opportunity for some deviations from her unrelenting watch. Seconds later, the brothers were on their way downstairs.

Zelda's brows rose as she listened to their guilty little tale. "I daresay she'll have you make up for that, won't she?"

The boys scowled and mumbled replies that amounted to the affirmative. She would probably have them write out "I will not disobey my governess" and "I will not substitute sugar for salt" a couple hundred times, keep their room extra tidy for a week, subject them to a few days of learning how to cook under Zunari's watch, or any other suitable punishment she could devise. They knew there was no chance of skipping out on it either, for neither their parents nor sister had ever seen fit to contravene Navi's effective disciplinary methods.

Even though their mission was complete, the boys still hung about, as if trying to delay their next dreaded apology. With the distraction that the rascals had brought, the intensity of Zelda and Aryll's grief had lessened slightly, but they still clasped each other's hand and mopped at their faces. After seeing her friend interact with her troublesome brothers, Aryll was thinking of how much she missed her own brother and her eyes misted up again. Zelda squeezed her hand tighter as her own heart gave another painful lurch.

"Why are you crying?" Zill questioned, staring unabashedly at the two young ladies.

"Is that why you're red in the face?" queried Joel.

"Why do girls cry so much?"

Joel turned to his younger brother, looking like he wanted to smack him again. "You shouldn't say that to them, Zill!"

"You said they're red!" Zill countered, poking his finger toward his brother. "That's not any better!"

"It's the truth!"

"Well, so is—"

Zelda couldn't cry or grieve or feel any other emotion but that of annoyance while that or any other of their ridiculous arguments went on. "Break it up, you two," she said, her tone bearing a warning note that they recognized well. "Don't you have somewhere you need to be right now?"

Joel sidestepped her inquiry neatly. "But you're sad, right? So we should cheer you up, right Zill?" He gave his brother a particular look.

"Are you sad because Link's missing?" the younger boy questioned.

Joel cocked his eyebrows. "Can't you find him?"

Their sister gulped and this time Aryll pressed at her hand. Any words she might have said stopped in Zelda's throat. Was she so transparent that everyone seemed to know how deeply it affected her?

"I bet Captain FD could find him in a flash! He'd bust down all the walls until he found Link!" Zill declared.

"Nuh-uh! The Atomic Minish would do better," Joel insisted. "He could get into small places and see things a normal-sized person wouldn't!"

"But FD is stronger than anyone! If Link was trapped somewhere, he could get him out right away. Minish would be too small!"

"But the Minish is quick. He could go for help and be back in less than the time FD would take to get him out."

Before their newest squabble could escalate any further, Zelda lifted up her own voice, "Enough, you two! No more stalling, no more arguments. March yourselves down to the kitchen and tell Zunari you're sorry."

Their gazes snapped back to their sister, their sheepish expressions turning to pouting ones. "And can we get some food?" Zill asked hopefully.

"Yes, you may. But…!" she said, holding up her finger when they began to cheer exultantly. "You must make it a heartfelt apology. I don't think he'll be inclined to give you anything if you cannot make him believe you."

The brothers nodded slowly, a bit unsure of themselves. "Okay," Joel said at last. "Race you, Zill!"

With the boys pelting out into the hall, Zelda sighed and said, "I think I should go down there and make sure they don't blow up the kitchen."

"They're such lovable little rascals, aren't they?"

"I suppose so… They've obviously been reading too many comic books though."

"Link has a few of them, too. He keeps them in his room," Aryll said, a ghost of smile stealing over her lips.

"Oh that's right. He says he reads them so he can keep up with what interests Joel and Zill."

"…At least, he did have some," the other girl whispered, her smile fading as quickly as it had come. "Everything of his is gone now…"

Zelda turned to her friend, the tears not yet dried on her face and a wobble to her tone, and yet her turquoise eyes shone with reawakened fervor. "I was wrong, Aryll. I was so wrong earlier. I forgot all my hope and discouraged you too. Will you forgive me?"

"Of course," her blonde friend replied. "But only if you'll forgive me too."

"You don't have to ask. It's behind us now. We have to stick together, don't we? Anyway, let's go see what our chef managed to make out of the mess my brothers created."

Both young women arose and traipsed downstairs. Zelda averted another disaster when the boys wanted to see how long it would take for one of their little wooden toys to burst into flames when left on the hot range. They had made an adequate apology to the chef and their sister told him that Zill and Joel could each have a sandwich. They still had to go up to their room to eat, though. The two young ladies then had a delayed dinner with Zelda's mother, as her father was working late at the office. Giselda expressed concern for her daughter's worn-out appearance, suggesting that she retire early.

A little while later, when she was lying in bed waiting for sleep to take her, Zelda's mind was busy with thoughts of the day. A few more tears slipped down and ran into her hairline, but the hope she'd spoken about earlier kept her from too much doubt and despair. She thought of her brothers' enthusiastic insistence that their favorite superheroes could save Link. Though the fanciful idea was appealing to some small degree, she was a grownup and could not entertain it seriously. She could not count on fairy tales or comic book heroes to come to her rescue…or Link's.

She turned her head and whispered into the darkness, "Aryll?"

The other girl made no reply, the only sound being that of her soft breaths. She shifted her gaze back up to the ceiling and stared the slight illumination which stretched across it due to a gap in the curtains. As exhausted as she was, sleep was not yet hers; within her mind the old, worrisome thoughts warred against the positive ones. What gave her hope, however, was the thought that perhaps there was something she could do.

* * *

_Happy New Year to you! Thank you for your continued support for this story! It would be pretty lonely without you all. I hope you all have a happy, blessed new year with many good things to come._

* * *

01-01-2020 ~ Published (8,161 words)


	8. Keeping Hope

**Keeping Hope for Christmas - by Pseudo Twili**

Chapter 8: Keeping Hope

When Zelda awoke the next morning, the first thing she became aware of was the copious amount of sunshine filtering through the mostly closed curtains, bouncing up from the floor to the ceiling and then into her eyes. It took her muddled, sleep-crusted mind a minute or two to realize what that meant. Then she shot up in her bed and reached for the little clock on her bedside table, blinking at it before she could focus properly.

"Ten o'clock," she muttered.

She glanced at the other side of her ample bed and then at the rest of her room. Aryll was nowhere within sight. But that made sense, she realized. She remembered that her blonde friend had a morning shift at the library. She sighed to herself as she began thinking of the day before her. Her mind began spinning with the same thoughts with which she'd gone to sleep. However, before she could sink too deeply back into the dark places again, she gave herself a little shake and reminded herself that she had a plan.

She peeled back the bedclothes, set her feet on the floor and then went about dressing. She went downstairs some minutes later, her stomach pressing emptily at her insides. She persuaded Zunari, who was still disgruntled and sour over the events of the evening before, to make her some simple eggs, bacon and toast. She ate quickly, thanked him and mounted the stairs again. She met Techer in the hall and inquired of her mother's whereabouts.

"She is in her room, Miss Zelda," he replied.

"Thank you, Techer." She turned away and took a step in that direction, but she stopped and faced him again. She had a worried little frown on her face as she said, "I'm sorry I was short with you last night. I'm afraid I was very tired and out of sorts, but that's really no excuse."

"Please do not think on it a moment more, Miss Zelda," he said, his tone even and his expression placid, except for the downward tilt of his eyebrows.

Though he spoke not another word, she knew he understood what she was going through and did not hold it against her. She managed a small smile for him before heading toward her parents' room. She felt a bit lighter of heart having made her little apology. Techer had been with her family since before she was born, and a dearer, kinder man she was sure she'd never meet. She held him in such regard that except for his position as servant in her family's household, he was almost like a beloved uncle.

She tapped at her mother's door and then twisted the knob. The lady of the house was in her sitting room, in a comfortable chair near the snapping fire and with a little lap desk resting across her knees. With a concerned little tilt of her eyebrows, she glanced up when Zelda entered.

"Good morning, Mumsie," she said, and bending, placed a kiss on that lady's cheek.

Giselda returned the greeting. "We thought it best to let you sleep, dear," she added, as though she could read her daughter's thoughts.

The young woman chuckled lightly, despite the weightier thoughts which clouded her mind. "I suppose I did. I won't begrudge that." She gestured to the papers before her mother. "What are you working on?"

"Menu plans. And some of these accounts won't tally, so I'm checking them over."

Zelda's brow crinkled and the corners of her lips dipped downward. She plopped down on the upholstered footstool and stared earnestly into the green eyes. "Are you sure, Mother? It's not too much for you?"

"My dear, I am not an invalid. The doctor merely said I have to take it easy," the elder lady replied. She amended the light scolding by supplementing with, "This is work for the mind and the best kind to keep me occupied."

Trying not to look too sheepish, Zelda stared down at her hands in her lap. "I'm sorry. I guess I'm just worried about everything now…"

But her mother had caught sight of her bandaged left hand and gently caught it up between her own fingers. "What happened?" she asked, fixing her daughter with an unmovable emerald look.

"It was just a silly little accident, Mother, truly. Anjean fixed it up before I left yesterday."

Giselda tsked, though it was because she hadn't seen it the night before and not so much because her daughter had been careless. All the same, she unwound the bandage and satisfied herself that the cut was not festering. Then she wound the thin strip around Zelda's palm again and patted it.

"What are you going to do today, my dear?" she inquired, as Zelda had informed her at dinner the evening before that Anjean had let her off.

"Oh, yes. That's what I came to tell you. I'm going out…to look for clues about Link."

The elder lady's brows wrinkled. "My dear…"

But Zelda interrupted her almost frantically. "Please don't try to dissuade me, Mother! Please! I'll go crazy if I have to go one more day without any news. I have to do _something_!" Unbidden tears suddenly lurked at the corners of her eyes and she tried to brush them away.

Giselda considered her daughter, a concerned look permeating deep into her eyes and morphing the rest of her face. She spoke slowly. "What of the police? And the private investigators your father hired?"

"I know, I know," the young woman replied quickly. She'd been thinking about that the night before, too. "How can I expect to find anything when they've been through it several times already?" She ran her finger along a seam in her skirt and then raised her eyes to meet her mother's. "I just want to go over it myself, see it all with my own eyes. It's such a slim hope, but maybe…just maybe there is something they did not consider because they don't know him. I know Link better than anyone, except maybe Aryll, and I… I have to try, Mother. I have to do something! I can't just wait around worrying anymore!"

She realized that her eyes were wet and she didn't even know when she'd started to cry. She gave a little gulp and fumbled for her handkerchief. Her mother set aside her writing desk and pulled Zelda close, enveloping her in one of those warm, tender hugs that mamas are so adept at. She pressed her cheek against her daughter's hairline and held her close to her heart.

When Zelda had wept her tears, she pulled back, blew her nose and looked at her mother. She didn't need words to thank her.

Giselda was still holding her hand. "I won't try to make you change your mind then. But I want you to promise me to be careful. If Link is in trouble and you try to find him, you may find trouble yourself." She fixed her daughter with a sternly loving eye. "Don't take any chances, my dear. In fact, I would feel much better if you let the chauffeur take you wherever it is you must go."

"Oh, but Mother!" the young lady protested. She wiped away the rest of her tears and rapidly tucked her hanky away. "Won't Dad be needing him anyway?"

"I will call your father and explain to him. I'm sure he won't mind taking a taxi home."

Zelda didn't want the talkative Ferrus to be trailing after her. Taken in small doses, he was bearable, but if he drove her around all day, she knew he would get on her nerves. Although… if she did employ his services, at least she wouldn't have to keep a cabbie waiting for her all the time… She sighed resignedly. She could easily go against her mother's wishes and take a cab herself, but she wouldn't do that.

"All right, I'll have Ferrus take me," she agreed, repressing another sigh.

At that reassurance, her mother's worried expression eased somewhat. "Thank you, my dear. Now, before you go there is one thing I must tell you. Navi asked me this morning if she might have two or three weeks off so she can go to her sister, who is ill."

"Oh, I hope it's nothing too serious!"

"She did not elaborate. Now, I expect we will have difficulty in procuring another governess this close to Christmas. I daresay the boys will not suffer if they leave off most of their studies for a little while, but I may not be up to the task anyway. Are you willing to help look after your brothers again?"

Zelda opened her mouth immediately, but no words came. To have Link's disappearance weighing heavily on her heart and mind, and then to have to contend with her little brothers' antics and mischief was almost more than she wanted to bear. She wanted to refuse, to plead with her mother to find someone or to ask Navi to stay even a little bit longer. Then she caught Giselda's eye and realized her mother looked tired and had a couple new creases around her eyes. Was she so caught up in her own problems that she didn't actually see those of her family? She suddenly wondered how well her mother had slept the previous night.

She took a long breath and released it before she replied, "I suppose it's the only thing to do."

"You're a good girl, Zelda. You've done so much when I haven't been well. I want you to know it hasn't gone unnoticed," her mother said quietly, placing her hand over her daughter's.

"It what I'm here for, isn't it?" she replied, managing a watery smile as she gave the elder lady's hand a squeeze. "I'm glad to help."

Giselda patted her hand, the small wrinkles around her mouth curving along with a smile. "Be careful out there, dear."

"I will, Mother. I'll see you later, probably at dinnertime."

Returning to her room just long enough to take up her hat, handbag, gloves and coat, she hastened downstairs. Apparently her mother had called down and had Ferrus get the car out, as he already had it warming up and waiting in the driveway. Zelda gave a little smile at that bit of thoughtfulness, and then hastened toward the vehicle. The chauffeur saluted and grinned perkily as he held the door open for her, but she hardly noticed.

He slid into the driver's seat and turned his head back to her. As he did nearly every time he took her or her brothers somewhere, he asked, "Going to the train station?"

"No, Ferrus. Take me to nineteen twenty Eventide, please."

He had to raise his voice to be heard over the sound of the motor. "Ah, Master Link's apartment? I'm real sorry about that, Miss Zelda. I could help you get over him, you know. I could show you my collection of photographs and we could go watch the trains…" His expression was almost wistful, like a little boy who wanted to bypass his schoolwork so he could play with his favorite toys.

"That's very sweet of you to want to help me, Ferrus," she replied, returning his eye contact. "But I know you have a girl already and she wouldn't like you paying such attention to me. Just take me to Eventide Lane."

He sighed, grumbled and turned back to the steering wheel. He was quiet for a couple minutes, but then recovered enough to start chattering about trains and what a marvelous invention they were. Sure, cars were great and he had nothing against them, but trains were so much more impressive and intriguing and they had been around longer than automobiles. Zelda did her best to shut out his ramblings, aided somewhat by the noise of the engine and the traffic around them.

Once they had arrived at the apartment building and she was mounting the steps, she realized she'd forgotten that the apartment was locked and Aryll was not with her. She paused for just a moment at the stoop, wondering if she should wait for the end of her friend's shift at the library. Then she remembered that the superintendent had a pass key, and she entered the building, hoping that he or his wife would let her into the apartment.

"Hmm…I dunno…" the man drawled as he rubbed a red spot on his neck. He had been making repairs to the furnace and cursing and striking at it when it didn't do as he wanted. "The police said not to let anyone in there…"

"Oh, but surely they couldn't mean me," the young lady contended. "I would have come here with Aryll—Miss Galen, that is—except she's at work until after noon. I'm not a suspicious character or whatever they're worried about. You've seen me around here enough to know that, isn't that right Mr. Tarin?"

"Well, I suppose so," he agreed slowly, scratching at his neck again. "All righty, then."

She released the breath she'd only begun holding and followed him up the stairs. He let her into the siblings' apartment and while he shuffled back to hassle with the furnace, she looked around. The few rooms were much as she'd last seen them when the police had been there, but somehow they seemed so much emptier without anyone else there. _It isn't supposed to be this way, _she thought. _Link, wherever you are I am going to find you. You have to come home again!_

She glanced around Aryll's room, peeking into the tiny closet to make sure nothing else had gone missing. The kitchen was as clean as Aryll had left it, and in the bathroom the sink was completely dry. Turning her attention to Link's room, she poked into every conceivable corner, trying to find some evidence, no matter how slight, that he wasn't the one who had been in the apartment and taken all his things. She felt that it was her best starting place and she went at it with a right good will, lifting the cushions on the fold-out couch and putting her fingers into the cracks until she felt the springs, getting down on her knees and peering underneath the meager pieces of furniture, lifting the rug and coughing on the dust, and pulling all the drawers out in his dresser.

"Don't forget to look on the underside of those," said a voice in the doorway.

Zelda started and the drawer she'd just pulled out fell from her grasp and made a solid thunk on the floor. Her heart thumped madly as she jerked her gaze to the owner of the voice. Ferrus was standing there, leaning against the doorframe while his jaws worked on a wad of gum. She placed a gloved hand on her chest and released a long breath.

"What are you doing here?" she demanded.

"Well, Mrs. Harkinian asked me to watch out for you, make sure you're safe. It's no trouble, let me tell you!" He paled a bit under her glare. "Begging your pardon, Miss Zelda, but it's my duty."

She rolled her eyes, tempted to send Ferrus back home. But she knew such a prospect would require more effort than it was worth, especially when she wanted to concentrate on her own little investigation. "Just stay there and don't get in my way, then," she said, giving him a cautionary look.

"Yes, ma'am!" he replied cheerily. He watched as she continued her search. "You really should look at the undersides. I saw in a movie once where the good guy hid something from the crooks by taping it under the bottom of a drawer."

"Why in the world would Link have to hide anything like that in his own apartment?" she retorted, in spite of her promise to herself to ignore him.

He shrugged. "Dunno. Just thought I'd try to help."

Wanting to shut him up, if that was even possible, she yanked out the rest of the drawers and tipped them upside down. "You see?" she said. "Nothing is hidden here! Now will you please go back to the car and wait for me there? I'll be down shortly."

He seemed to be weighing his options, whether to cut a corner around his employer's strict instructions, or to risk further aggravating the pretty young woman he was tasked with chauffeuring around.

"…Okay," he said. "I'll be waiting downstairs. Scream if you need anything."

"I'm sure it won't come to that," she muttered, facing the dresser again.

She glanced up and met her own gaze in the medium-sized mirror on the wall. She sighed, hating to admit to herself that she'd been hoping to find something too, as ridiculous as it sounded. Then she bent and began replacing the drawers, surprising herself by half wishing that Ferrus had stayed long enough to at least help her with that, since it had been his idea. She tried to jam the last drawer in but it would not fit; she quickly realized that she'd mixed it up with the lower drawer, as they were slightly different in size. She pulled the other one out again and returned them to their proper positions with decided bangs.

She was just about to get up from her knees when she saw the paper which was used to line the inside of one of the drawers had fallen out. She muttered under her breath about Ferrus being a loudmouth with stupid ideas. As she reached for the paper, she paused when she realized something else was there too. She picked it up and suddenly choked on her breath. She recognized it immediately as the card she'd given Link for his birthday. He had probably put it at the bottom of the drawer to preserve it from wrinkles and wear.

She stared at it for several minutes. She flipped it open, gazing upon the little message and best wishes she's written there, complete with her scrawled name. He had obviously thought enough of it to keep it so well, a thought which made her heart feel all warm and cold at the same time. The discovery was so small that Zauz would likely discredit it when she would inform him of it, but it meant much more to her. It was just a particularly poignant bit of evidence that Link hadn't taken his things. If he took his other mementos, why not the card? She supposed the detective might disregard it completely, saying that the young man was in a hurry and simply forgot about it, but she couldn't…wouldn't believe that.

Her hand trembled as she slipped the card into her pocketbook, anticipating showing it to Aryll. She swiftly put the drawer paper back where it belonged and took one more look at the floor to make sure she hadn't missed anything else. She stood and made once more quick survey of the room. She reflected again how empty it seemed without Link's possessions lying about to make it look lived-in. She swallowed thickly and shook her head then, knowing that path was one she'd best not tread.

She was almost out the door when she spotted something small and dirty-white lying against the baseboard. Crouching, she leaned over it and saw that it was a cigarette butt. She poked at it with one finger but refrained from picking it up. Perhaps that explained the smell she'd noticed the last time she and Aryll had been there, though at the time she'd half thought one of the policemen had been smoking, and then she'd been distracted before she considered it any further. She knew Link didn't smoke, but Zauz would probably tell her that wasn't proof enough that anyone else had been in the apartment. She left it where it lay and hurried downstairs.

After thanking the superintendent and asking him to lock the apartment again, Zelda went out to the street. Ferrus was leaning against the front end of the family car, blathering on to a taxi driver who was waiting for a fare and been unlucky enough to be collared by the chauffeur. The cabbie had a dark, grumpy sort of expression, which brightened considerably when Ferrus had to leave.

"Where to now, Miss Zelda?" he questioned after he'd settled into the driver's seat.

"Just drive," she replied. "I'll tell you where to go."

Obediently, he put the car in gear, checked for oncoming traffic and then pulled out into the street. When they had to stop at a traffic light, he turned his head partway back to his passenger and asked, "So did you find anything, Miss Zelda? You looked kinda shaken when you came out."

"Oh, be quiet Ferrus!" she exclaimed, giving him a brief, rather scathing glare.

He clamped his lips together and scowled, but he was, for the moment at least, silent. Then he narrowly missed scraping the side of another car, the driver of which blared his horn angrily, and Ferrus had to pay closer attention to the traffic.

Zelda's heart thrummed loudly in her ears as she tried to figure out what she was going to do next. She had been planning to go to all the places were Link could ordinarily have been found: the department store, the gym he went to on a semi-regular basis, and the drugstores and eateries she knew him to frequent. But somehow, after finding the card which had not disappeared with his other belongings, she felt completely undone. She could hardly think of anything else.

Her fingers stole to her purse and she withdrew the thick cardstock. It was such a simple card. It had fun, comic-like drawings of a grumpy dog, which looked remarkably like a wolf, and silly rhymes about birthday presents and being good or bad. Perhaps, she reflected now, it wasn't quite the thing to give a grown-up after all, and might have been better suited for one of her brothers. But when she had seen it on display in a stationary store, she had instantly thought of Link and his approaching birthday, and she smiled because the grumpy dog reminded her of him. He had thanked her for the card, of course, but he'd said little else and she hadn't quite known what he'd thought of it. She'd never dreamed that he'd kept it for those months.

_You could have just told me you liked it,_ she scolded him within her mind. Her eyes flashed as they did when her ire was aroused, and she briefly thought of the angry things she might say to him when next she saw him. She would have to give him a piece of her mind, to reproach him for his distance and reluctance at letting her get closer. But those thoughts rapidly faded, leaving her as deflated as Zill's balloon after he'd stuck a pin in it. She wanted to scold Link, certainly, but she'd probably cry over him and be a blubbering mess. She ached just to be able see him again, to gaze into his blue eyes, the look of which she sometimes still did not understand, and to know that he was all right.

Then she knew where she wanted to go next. With her fingers still tracing over the card, she raised her eyes and leaned forward slightly. "Ferrus, take me to Library Skyloft."

~O~

The room in which Link was imprisoned had a single light bulb hanging from a fixture which was a little off from the center of the ceiling. He used it after darkness had fallen, but it flickered occasionally and he was anxious that it would fail altogether. As the days were about at their shortest and the nights at their longest, he could not bear to remain in the inky blackness while the electrical light still functioned. When all was dark, all he could do was lie on his mattress and think, his mind taking him down dark paths of past and future.

Even during the daytime, the light coming in from the window was sometimes inadequate, depending on what the weather was like outside and how much snow was piled against the pane; however, he refused to use the electrical light unless it was truly dark outside. Each time he turned it on he held his breath and prayed it wouldn't go out. If and when it did, he knew he couldn't count on the crooks to bring him a new bulb.

He went through his clothes and other possessions the gangsters had dumped in there with him. He put on as many of his spare clothes as he could, even though so many layers felt bulky and tight; at least he was a little warmer because of it. The rest of his things fit nicely into one of the valises, which he set near his mattress. He read through the comic books which he'd been keeping for Zill and Joel and when he was finished he also put them into the valise, to read again later.

A couple of times he took out his treasured mementos, the baseball, the tiny plastic horse and a bit of white quartz Zelda had picked up at the riverside, held them closely in his hand and remembered those times with his dearest friend. He almost wanted to cast the items away from him, as the happiness they represented seemed so far away and completely beyond his grasp now. But he could not do that anymore than he could destroy his sister's blouse. He merely put the little items back into the valise and closed it up. He considered putting his journal of captivity into the bag as well, but discarded the idea because he wanted to keep the book well hidden.

The newspaper which had covered the bundle of his clothing lay on the floor where he'd left it. He lifted his gaze and stared at it for a moment; a quirk came to his lip and, arising from his mattress, he grabbed for the discarded wrappings. The newspaper consisted of three entire sheets, which he immediately began to devour with his eyes and mind, with as much voracity as he would have torn into a steak dinner suddenly placed before him.

The individual sheets were all from the same edition of the Hyrule City Times evening paper, dated two days before. First he scanned it, searching for any mention of his disappearance and the search he could only imagine Zelda would insist on, and possibly aided by her family. He saw no mention of it, but of course the paper was incomplete, missing the front page and several in between. He sighed, grumbling and complaining to himself; he'd been hoping for a link to the outside world that he knew, no matter how slim it was.

Then he began to pour over all the details in the paper. He viewed advertisements for Fox Silky Soap Flakes and the new Beedle convertibles, and caught himself drooling over an ad for Wheaton and Pita's Amazing Loaves. He read the various columns that detailed who had been on vacation, who had gotten married, who was expecting babies, who had died, and who had been charged with a misdemeanor or felony. The help wanted section had many requests for maids, housekeepers, cooks, waitresses, secretaries and other office staff, mechanics, window washers, and for factory work. There was even a small ad for seasonal package wrappers and delivery boys for Rupin's department store.

"I'm surprised he even bothers to hire extra help rather than overworking his staff, the old skinflint," he muttered to himself before he turned the page over. Perhaps Shad, who always had the workers as well in mind as the store itself, had something to do with that.

The personal columns were the most fun of all. A greater portion of them were of either man or woman looking for companionship. There were others that made even Link give a sardonic little upward twist of the lips. Someone named Garshon was begging Aliza to come back home and bring the radio with her. A boy named Gully wanted an insect collection so he could get a good grade and his teacher would not fail him. A young lady was searching for a new date for a school dance, as her boyfriend was too immature.

When he had finished reading every word, every character in the paper, he turned back to the beginning and started over again. Even though he'd perused it meticulously the first time, he found a few items he didn't quite remember from before and he delighted in them. After his second perusal he considered going through it again but decided in favor of saving that for later. He turned the pages back, trying halfheartedly to avoid the ad for the bread but again found himself staring at it. His mouth watered and his stomach moved noisily, emptily against his insides. Finally he couldn't stand it anymore and closed the newspaper, folding it up hastily and throwing it in the valise with his other things.

Seeing Wheaton and Pita's bread caused him to think. He remembered a Sunday before his capture when he had been at the park with Zelda, his sister and her brothers. The girls had brought some bread to give to the birds in the pond, though the naughty little boys had taken more pleasure in throwing the crusts directly at the ducks, rather than nearby for them to eat. They didn't do any harm, as the ducks were too far away anyhow, but Zelda took the bread away from them, scolded them and told them they couldn't have it back until they learned to be nice to the birds. When they jumped up for the bag that held the remainder of the bread, she gave it to Link, leaving it to his discretion as to whether or not they'd learned their lesson.

Unless he was losing his mind and his memory, he figured he should still have that bag in a pocket somewhere, as he did not recall ever discarding it. He jerked up from his leaning position against the wall, pushed back the cocoon of blankets which covered him, and thrust shaking hands into his pockets. It took him a moment to realize he was searching in the jacket he'd been wearing since meeting Daupple; had there been anything useful in those pockets he would have found it much sooner.

He cursed the many layers that he wore, and fumbled with the second jacket he'd donned, putting his hand first into one of the outside pockets. All that met his fingers was a piece of paper. He withdrew it; it was a single sheet, about the size of those that could sometimes be found next to a private telephone. He held it in his right hand while with his left he continued digging around in his many pockets. Suddenly he froze as he glimpsed some of the words on the creased note. That was his sister's name! His heart gave a great palpitation and he felt quite lightheaded for a moment before he remembered to breathe.

Written in a hand that had become familiar to him in the past year, the note read: _Link, I am at Zelda's place. When you see this, please call me, please._ And it was signed simply, _Aryll_.

He would never know just how long he stared at that bit of cream-colored paper while his brain tried to catch up to its meaning. Gradually, light came into his eyes and his whole face transformed. He jumped to his feet and stumbled nearer the window, thinking that the bad lighting was playing tricks on him. The note still said the same thing. He gave a half strangled little shout and then gasped for another breath after the one he'd been holding gave out. He clutched at the paper, not caring that he was wrinkling it as he read the words over and over again. It was as if he had been in complete darkness and the sun was suddenly beaming down upon him.

He realized after a little while that he was trembling, though perhaps it was more because of his hunger and frenzied excitement than the cold. He cast himself down on his bed and stared up at the ceiling. He did not try to stem the relieved tears, nor subdue the smile which cracked his lips.

He turned over and fished for the book hidden beneath him. He read Aryll's note one more time and then placed it between a couple of the ledger's pages. The small paper was considerably crumpled and had tears splattered on it, but to him it was the most beautiful thing in the world. He smoothed it out and pressed it between the pages. Then he took up his pencil.

_Dec. 16. They were lying to me, the dirty rotten scum! They tried to bluff me into making me help them. Thank the goddesses it didn't work! I know now that Aryll is safe. I don't mind my imprisonment quite so much now that I know she is not in their filthy hands. I don't have to worry about her. She'll be safe with Zelda and her family. _

_I feel like such a weight has been lifted from me. It doesn't matter so much what happens to me now…except for Zelda. I don't want her to ever be sad. Her smile is like the sun, warming me to my very soul. Her eyes are like green woodland pools reflecting an unblemished blue sky. And her heart… I think it must be big and kind enough for all the cares in world, though I suppose she must restrict herself to the most important ones…_

_I love her, this I know. And I wonder…does she care for me? Will I ever know? Though I am afraid I won't be getting out of here alive to find out, even if I did have the courage to ask her. She may be willing to give herself to a man she thinks she knows, but I could not ask it of her. I would not hurt her even if it meant my life. Perhaps… Perhaps it is better this way, that I fade away and that she should forget me._

_The only way I can get free is to agree to help them. That I will never do! I will not rob her! Though I am hardly better than them. I tried to steal that golden cup from the cathedral once. Who knows what would have happened to me if the old priest hadn't stopped me then. He saved me from myself, from hunger and from what might have been the start of a life of crime, like that which Daupple had already embarked on. _

_After feeding me and giving me a bed in a room that was hardly bigger than a closet, he had me work. Whether it was raking leaves, tearing up the old dead things from the garden, sweeping up in the cathedral, cleaning and polishing, he always had something for me to do. I suppose it was the very thing I needed, but at the time I hated it. I tried to avoid the chores and when he kept after me I did them halfheartedly and just enough to skim the surface. But he always made me go back and do them right. I've never thought of it before, but those skills he instilled in me are with me to this day. _

_I stayed with him for a few months or so. He was quiet and gentle and called me "son". He never raised his voice or his hand to me. He spoke in calm, even tones, but he was always firm and solid as bedrock when it came to my work. He hardly let me get away with anything, but when I did I knew it was only because he was letting me off rather than me getting out without him being the wiser. I knew as long as I stayed there that I had to do what he bade me, though I didn't like it. He even told me at the beginning that I didn't have to stay if I didn't want to, but he hoped I would. Sometimes when I was angry I threatened to leave and then he would look sad and hurt. I never carried it beyond grabbing my things and going out to the street. I had nowhere to go and so I stayed. _

_After a while, I guess I started to appreciate the place better. In the morning and evening I liked to hear the bells ringing in the tower, I liked reaching up with a stick to light or extinguish the high candles, I liked hearing the organ on Sundays, I looked with pride at the new garden I'd just helped plant, and I even became fond of the old priest. He gave me lessons whenever we had a chance and I learned a surprising number of things during that time. But none of it was to last…_

_I wondered why he would send me outside or to another part of the temple whenever people were around. I thought he was ashamed of me because I was just a kid off the street, little more than a delinquent. I was a fool. He was only trying to keep me hidden because he wanted me to stay. I found out one night when I found him sitting in his quarters with his head bent low and buried in his hands. I thought he was sick and I dashed toward him. _

_"What's wrong?!" I cried, falling to my knees by his side._

_He lifted his face and I saw the tears glistening on his cheeks. I knew it had to be something bad. My heart pounded like hail on the roof above us. _

_"My boy," he murmured, his voice husky. "I… I must send you away." New tears spilled from his eyes as he said it._

_I jumped up from his side, anger blooming within me. I was sure he had betrayed me! I couldn't speak; if I had I would have wept as he did. I spun and scrambled for the door._

_"Wait!" he called after me. His tone was more urgent and commanding than I'd yet heard it, even when he'd warned me about the unsteady ladder I had been on once. _

_I turned but I could not look at him. I clenched my fists by my sides and told myself over and over that I mustn't cry. _

_"Son, you know this is not what I want, don't you?" he asked. _

_When I did not answer, he rose from his chair with a slight creaking of his bones and came toward me. He put a hand on my shoulder and even though I knew he would never strike me, I shied from his touch. I turned away so he couldn't see my face. _

_"Listen to me, son. I want you to stay, more than anything I can name! Do you hear me? I've never had children, but you are like a son to me."_

_"Then why are you sending me away?!" I screamed, suddenly whirling on him. I couldn't stop the tears from rolling down my cheeks. _

_He reached out for me then. He pulled me close and hugged me firmly, yet gently, with all the considerable strength he possessed. I didn't resist, but I also didn't pull my arms up from my sides either. _

_"I love you, my boy," he said and his voice caught. "If it were in my power I would have you stay here as long as you wished to stay. But, you know, sometimes the goddesses have other plans for us. It may seem like a trial, a terrible ordeal, but there's always some good in store for us if only we know where to look. We just have to keep faith with the goddesses and look toward the future with hope."_

_"Hmph!" I said. His words seemed very empty to me right then._

_"You may not understand it now, but all I ask is that you remember what I've told you. Don't lose your faith and always keep hope."_

_"What's the point?" I cried, a bitter taste on my tongue and in my tone. "Why are you sending me away?"_

_He sighed and loosened his hold around me, still keeping one arm behind my back. "You know I merely the caretaker for this temple," he said, and I knew he was being humble in his title. "I am subject to wishes of the board who owns it. They pay for the upkeep, the candles, the utilities, the repairs, and so on. Somehow they have found out that you have been staying with me and they insist that I send you away. I have argued with them, pleaded with them, cajoled them, but they will not be moved. I'm so sorry, my son!"_

_I knew what they were worried about. I was a scraggly kid the old priest had pulled off the street. I didn't even tell him my whole name, for I was afraid if anyone knew they would send me back. I called the board members some nasty and unflattering names. He didn't seem to have the heart to reprimand me for it, though he did cut me off when I was just getting warmed up. I broke away from his touch again, folded my arms in front of me and scowled my very best scowl. _

_"Why don't you leave, too?" I challenged him, even though deep down I knew it was selfish. I had a fanciful idea that we could find a place for both of us, where he could be proud of me as his son and I could have a father. _

_His expression turned stern, his tone solemn enough that I had to look up at him. "I considered that," he admitted. "I want it still now… But, at the thought of leaving, my heart grows uneasy. It was the work of the goddesses that I was placed here and it would displease them indeed if I were to leave my sworn duty. Though I want to go, I must stay." And then he looked like he would cry again. "It is hard, son. I know it is a hard thing."_

_I refused to speak to him the rest of the night. The next morning he asked his housekeeper to pack me a bag of food to eat and he told me to get my things together. I had little, but he gave me a worn valise to carry it in. He told me he'd bought a ticket for me to go to Hyrule City. He had arranged a job for me at a newspaper and that I had to report there the day after I arrived. He'd even written down the address of a boarding house with a good reputation and reasonable rates. _

_He drove me down to the bus station in a borrowed car, for he did not own one himself. The ride was stiff with the silence between us; I think he wanted to talk to me but wasn't sure how to break through my anger and despair. But before I boarded the bus, he pressed several rupees into my hand. He shook my hand, squeezing it with both of his. I suppose he wanted to hug me again but knew I wouldn't like it with everyone watching. _

_"Good bye, my son," he said quietly, his voice breaking at the last word. "May the goddesses always go with you." _

_I think I mumbled something to him in reply, I don't remember what. Then I hurried onto the bus. I saw him out the window as I took my seat, and I turned my eyes away. I couldn't look at him anymore, for that only made me want to jump off and run to him like a bawling little kid. As we pulled away, I was still hoping I'd hear a "Wait!" and the bus would stop and he would take me back. But it never happened and it wasn't long before we'd left the little town far behind. I was numb. I wished I could wake up from the dream, but I knew all along that it was real. _

_When we stopped at a roadside diner that evening, I made the mistake of letting the two young thugs who were seated on one side see the rupees the old priest had given me. Or perhaps they were already on board and had seen him put them into my hand at the station. I don't know. I was moping and feeling sorry for myself, and was stupid enough to let them catch me alone outside the diner. They dragged me out to the woods behind, hit me over the head, took my money, my ticket and everything else, and left me lying there. _

_By the time I staggered back to the diner, the bus was long gone and the two thugs with it. The lady who helped her husband run the place fussed over me and made me lie down in their back room. But since I had nothing, not even my extra clothes or the food the priest's housekeeper had prepared for me, I couldn't go on to the city. The man who owned the diner declared loudly that they weren't in business to give charity to foolish youth. I think I disliked him even before that, but I loathed him even more then. He shouted too much and had a tendency of banging the counter when the coffee urns wouldn't work properly. But his wife said I could help them out for a while in return for enough money for another bus ticket. _

_When I finally got to the city it was almost a week later. I went straight to the newspaper office, but the position the old priest had arranged for me had been filled by someone else. The man who told me that said he was sorry but there wasn't anything else available at the time. I went to the boarding house but I couldn't stay there because I had no money. I suppose I should have tried to get word back to the priest about my trouble, but I was too proud. I wanted to find my way on my own. That led me to struggling for many weeks to find a steady job. I found a few odd tasks here and there, just enough to put a few rupees in my pocket for food. Then I got the job at the department store._

_The old priest's name is Sahasrahla. He's still at the temple, keeping the board from using it always for their commercial purposes. He has enough clout to keep them in line at least. He tried to reach me for months after I left, but his letters came back. He even came to the city, desperate to track me down. He found me, too, but by that time I was working at the store. _

_He writes to me from time to time, though I am bad at replying to his letters. Sometimes he would send me a few rupees, telling me to add them to my savings for finding Aryll. He's always encouraged me to keep my hope of the future, but I'm afraid I've failed rather atrociously at that. For such a long time I thought no one cared about me, but he always has… I was wrong, very wrong, just as I have been about so many other things._

_I told Zelda about him once and she told me she loved him already. I bet he would like her too. She's just that sort of girl that anyone with all his marbles can't help but like her and admire how sweet she is. Sometimes I think of what our future together could have been like if I wasn't such a coward. I just wish I could see her one more time, even if it was just for a second. I can picture her so clearly, her turquoise eyes staring at me, her rosy lips breaking into a smile, her hand stretched out for mine. I remember how my heart beat so quickly as I watched her play the piano and I whispered to her, wondering if she knew it was all for her…_

_Christmas is her favorite time of year;  
__Like the lights she has her own glow;  
__Her smiling face invokes good cheer,  
__As she dances lightly through the snow._

_She is a goddess come from the sky;  
__I was like cactus without fruit or bloom.  
__She cared for me, heaven only knows why,  
__Lifting me from the dark and gloom._

_Before she came I wore a mask,  
__Biting and snapping like a cur.  
__Though I searched through every task,  
__Truly I didn't know until I found her._

_Without her I was doomed always to wander.  
__Time leaves us behind when she is there;  
__With her at my side my heart grows fonder.  
__She is my light, my hope, the reason I care._

_She is the dawn, all promise and light;  
__Like the sun, she is all warmth and allure.  
__She is the dusk, brilliant before the night;  
__Like the moon, her glow is soft and pure. _

_In every season she is fairer than the last,  
__To her the beauties of the ages cannot compare.  
__With her at my side I need not fear the past,  
__She is my world, her smile with me everywhere._

_She cocks her head, hands on her hips,  
__She says to me, "Where have you been?"  
__But my mind is on her perfect lips,  
__And I say to her, "Tell me that again."_

_After a night so long she is the morn;  
__She is the light that fills my heart.  
__Without her I am as one unborn;  
__From her I cannot long be apart._

_She is my lady, I am her knight;  
__I will always be none but… thine.  
__Dearest Zelda, with smile so bright,  
__Dearest Zelda… will you be mine?_

* * *

I guess Link isn't much of a poet... Wait, scratch that. _I'm_ not much of a poet. Haha! But after having at least a couple of reviewers wish to hear the poem from the first story, I thought I'd give it a try. Oh, and I just figured out how to get rid of the spaces between lines or paragraphs with FanFiction's formatting. I've seen stories without the extra space between paragraphs, so I knew it was possible. You just hold the Shift key and then you hit Enter. So simple!

* * *

01-03-2020 ~ Published (8,391 words)


	9. Searching

**Keeping Hope for Christmas - by Pseudo Twili**

Chapter 9: Searching

After warning Ferrus to remain with the car, Zelda mounted the steps to the library and located her blonde friend. It wasn't yet noon, but she was so deeply affected by her new discovery that she couldn't wait to show it to the girl. She found Aryll in another section of the library than she had the day before, but this time she took care not to startle her. When she produced the birthday card from Link's drawer, the younger girl gave a little gasp.

"He kept it? I never knew," she said, holding the card against a book she'd been about to shelve. Then her eyes flew to Zelda's. "Oh! But this…! This was in our apartment, wasn't it? He didn't take it!"

The elder of the two nodded somberly. She'd been turning it around in her mind on the ride over. On the one hand, it was encouraging that she'd found it, for the reason Aryll had so quickly seen. But it was also quite troubling, as it gave them no further clues as to his actual whereabouts or the reason for his disappearance. The most disappointing realization was that there was no evidence useful for the police to further their search. But Zelda refused to be completely disheartened just yet, for she so much more to do.

She wandered amongst the rows and rows of bookshelves, thinking and wondering, until Aryll was finished with her work for the day. Then the two young ladies went to one of the quieter eateries that Link sometimes took Zelda and occasionally his sister. While waiting for their orders, Zelda withdrew a snapshot of the young man and asked the manager and waitresses if they'd seen her missing friend. She already knew what the answer would be and afterward she gave them her phone number in case they did happen to see him.

Aryll elected to join her friend in the search; glad for the company, Zelda pressed her hand and gave it a light squeeze. Thus, as soon as they'd finished their lunch they started off together, going into a couple more cafés, a drugstore and a bakery. No one had seen the young man in question for several days at least. After the last of these, upon returning to the car, Ferrus paused before turning into traffic again, tilting his head back toward the girls.

"Aren't you bored with this now? How about taking a quick peek at the train station? Maybe he went there," he suggested.

"No, Ferrus," Zelda replied immediately.

They went to Rupin's next, but the place was so busy that the aisles were filled with shoppers and the sound of voices lifted clear to the ceiling and beyond. First they stopped at the sporting goods department, but neither of them recognized anyone there. Another employee had been required to assume Link's managerial position, but it was obvious by the disorder and frenzy of the sales personnel on that floor that the replacement was unfamiliar with his duties, unlike Link.

The young women then went up to Fairyland, which was certainly the most crowded, liveliest floor. Replete in red suit and hat and long white whiskers, Batreaux fit in Santa's throne quite nicely; Zelda remembered that Link hadn't filled it quite so much, even with the pillows with which he'd supplemented his costume. Children, hopping up and down and nudging their companions, waited in a lengthy line before Batreaux and he seemed tireless in his attentions to them.

However, when he finally looked up and noticed and recognized Zelda and Aryll, he gave them a slight nod. He listened to the lists of three more children, told them they must be good little boys and girls, and assured them they would receive at least some of the toys they wanted for Christmas. Then he rose from the chair and went a little area partitioned off from the rest of Fairyland, a small room which he used to don his crimson outfit at the start of the day and remove it at night. At his gesture, the young ladies followed him.

He looked quite different when he removed his beard and hat. His orange hair stuck out in tufts on his head and his face certainly wasn't the most handsome, but his genuine grin made everyone who met him forget about his other deficiencies. He placed the false beard on the little table nearby and offered the girls a seat. He mopped a sheen of sweat from his brow and the back of his neck.

"I'm sorry," Zelda said. "We didn't mean to disturb you from your work."

"It's no trouble," he replied. "I was due for a little break anyway."

Aryll folded her hands in her lap. She wasn't too familiar with the man, but knew he was friendly with her brother. "There are so many children out there."

Batreaux beamed. "Every child in the city must come here at Christmas, or nearly every one of them. I haven't any of my own so I like to see the little tykes happy," he declared, so thoroughly pleased with his job that he exuded it everywhere. "I'll go back to them in about ten minutes." Then he raised an eyebrow. "But you didn't come to talk to me about that, did you?"

The elder of two girls nodded. "We wanted to ask you…about Link."

His expression sobered considerably. "I was real sorry to hear about that. Haven't the police come up with anything?"

Zelda curled her lip inward. "They haven't find anything useful. In fact, they seem to think he disappeared willingly, so he could pull off something illegal…which is utterly ridiculous!"

His eyebrows rose and he frowned, his face looking almost scary. "That doesn't sound like the boy. It's not like him to miss even one day of work."

"I wish you could tell the police that," she muttered rather bitterly. "They're not doing anything more on the case now because no one seems to know where he went and there's 'no evidence of foul play.'"

Aryll's lips were pulled down at the corners. "That's why we're investigating for ourselves. It was all Zelda's idea and I wanted to help. So, uhm Mr. Batreaux, do you remember the last time you saw him?"

As he looked at her, his suddenly fearsome face gentled. He could see the resemblance she bore to her brother and he reflected that she seemed hardly more than a child herself. "Well, I think I saw him that last day he was here."

"That was the tenth," Zelda said, supplying that information as much for her benefit as the others.

"Ah yes, that was the day of the meeting. I saw Link, Mr. Tingle and the other floor managers going into Mr. Shad's office as I was leaving."

The elder of the young women nodded as she recalled Link's brief explanation of that meeting's purpose. "Did you see him before that? Did he say anything to you?" she queried, trying to quell the desperate note which crept into her voice.

Batreaux rubbed his chin as he thought back. "A day or two before that, when we knocked off for work we stopped for a quick drink together. Mind you, he refused anything harder than a soft drink, but I guess that's the way he is."

"Yes," Aryll said. "I've never seen him touch the stuff."

"What did you talk about? Do you remember?" Zelda questioned, leaning forward slightly. She could hardly dare hope that she'd find a clue, but she wished it all the same.

He shrugged. "I suppose it was what we usually talk about: sports, what sort of troubles we'd had at work, what we have to look forward to on our day off. Nothing out of the ordinary."

Zelda deflated visibly as she released a long breath. "Is that…all?"

"That's the extent of what we usually talk about," he replied. He glanced first to one girl and then the other. "He's changed, that boy has. He used to be grumpy and scowling all the time, but these last several months he's been different. He'll actually smile sometimes, and laugh when he hears a good joke. I don't mean to be forward, but perhaps you have had something to do with that?"

Neither young lady knew quite how to respond to his frank appraisal. They blushed, the rosy hue deeper on Zelda's cheeks than her friend's.

"I'm sorry," Batreaux said, and fiddled with the pointed hat with the large white pom-pom at the end. After a moment of awkward silence, he looked up again. "I invited him to my wedding, you know. I asked him to be one of my groomsmen."

"You're getting married? That's…" Zelda murmured and paused. Why was she suddenly thinking of Link? "…Wonderful," she finished, and she meant it with all her heart.

"Why, how splendid!" Aryll declared, her face brightening just a bit. "You must be very happy. When is the wedding?"

"In February," replied he. "I've been a bachelor all my life and I wanted to make it sooner, but Batrina won't have it any other way. What can I, a mere man, do?" He shrugged good-naturedly. "You're welcome to come too, being so close to Link as you are…if you'd like, that is."

Zelda made her best effort not to look sad at his invitation. Fortunately, it was more than a month away. For the time being, she didn't think she could go to any party, celebration or other festive event, as she knew she would be miserable with missing Link. "Thank you," she said quietly. "We don't want to inconvenience you."

"It's no trouble," he assured her with another smile. Then his cheery expression faded. "I just remembered something. Link did ask me an odd question. It was one of those times we had a drink together, after I'd told him I was getting married…"

"Oh? What was it?" the elder girl queried impatiently, almost eagerly. Aryll put a hand on her arm, whether to hold her back or to remind her to be calm, she wasn't sure.

Batreaux tapped a finger on the side of his bare chin. "How did it go now? Ah, yes, I remember! In a voice that was almost a whisper, he asked me if I was scared to be getting married. I told him I was nervous and just a little unnerved, but most of all happy. He asked how I knew that I could be a good husband to my Trina and father to our children. I just told him I was entering uncharted territory and I don't know how it's going to turn out, but that I'm going to do my level best. A strange question, eh?"

"Yes…" Zelda mused quietly. She turned the new information around in her mind, trying to figure out the meaning behind it. Then she tucked it away where she could later examine it in greater detail. "Do you remember anything else?"

"No, nothing," replied he. "I'm sorry I couldn't be of more help to you."

"That's all right. Thank you," she said, a bit absently.

"Maybe you have helped us," Aryll declared quietly, gazing straight into his dark eyes. "At least we might be closer to knowing what had been eating at him."

He grinned rather sheepishly and scratched through the orange hair on the back of his head. The two young ladies rose and he did too.

"Thank you for seeing us, Mr. Batreaux," said Zelda.

"It's my pleasure," replied he, and then he grabbed for his false beard. "Well, those ten minutes are about up, so I'd better get back to the children." He slipped the elastic band over his head, but paused before pulling the beard to its proper place. "I hope you can find Link. It just isn't right without him here."

They preceded him from the makeshift dressing room. While he returned to his throne and bent his head over the lists of countless children, the girls wandered around. They stopped at the perfume counter, where Zelda remembered talking to the pretty, petite clerk the year before. Deciding on a whim, she purchased a bottle of perfume for her mother. The salesgirl, replete with the usual butterflies in her hair, recognized Zelda and also expressed her consternation and sorrow that Link was missing. After the mess with the strike, he was something of her hero, but probably he didn't know it because she only admired him from afar. She had no new information this time, and she bid them a quick farewell when she had to go and assist another customer.

After a while, Zelda couldn't bear being in the store. The memories of seeing Link in Fairyland and as substitute Santa were all too vivid. She almost expected to see him at one of the counters; each time she was disappointed her stomach sank and her heart twisted. She felt almost as though she couldn't breathe, with both the walls and the noise closing in on her.

She turned to her friend, a woeful expression on her face. "Let's get out of here!"

When they reached the street, Aryll, with her eyebrows lowered worriedly, faced her. "What's wrong? Are you feeling all right?"

"Yes. I… I just couldn't stand it in there anymore. Let's… go somewhere else."

Ferrus brought the car around; once settled inside, they instructed him to take them to the gym where Link was wont to go. On the way over, they quietly discussed Batreaux's revelation. Their chauffeur was not able to overhear their muted words, much to his consternation.

"What do you suppose he meant by asking about that?" Aryll asked.

"I don't know," her companion replied. "But like you said, perhaps it's connected to whatever had been on his mind." In truth, she had the barest beginnings of an idea, but it still seemed so fragile that she didn't want to speak of it just yet.

Bo's Gymnasium, as it turned out, was in another part of town altogether. The outside of the building was a bit run down and disreputable looking, in need of a fresh coat of paint, but the inside was kept up well enough. Ferrus started out by following the young women inside, and Zelda, noticing this, told him to wait by the door. When he opened his big mouth and protested, she sent a warning look his way, not unlike those that she sometimes had occasion to visit upon her brothers.

The gym had the usual punching bags both large and small around the sides of the big room, and a ring near the center. A pair of fighters were sparring it out on the canvas, with more men standing at the sides watching them and sometimes shouting advice. Still others were around the periphery, jumping rope, working on their shadow boxing, or having a go at the bags. However, much of this action slowed or ceased when the men caught sight of the female visitors, and several whistles floated through the sweat-infused air. One of the fighters in the ring was distracted and got clipped by his sparring partner, which resulted in a heated exchange of words.

"What the deuce is going on?" exclaimed one deep voice.

The owner thereof, a stocky, middle-aged man without much blonde hair left on his head, was on the far outside of the ring and he came stomping around toward the girls. Besides nondescript gray trousers, he wore a stained, tan turtleneck sweater which did nothing to hide the bulk and muscle of his physique; the sweater had obviously been repaired in a couple of spots by someone whose forte was not sewing. When he spotted the young ladies, his jaw went slack for a moment before he tightened it. His impressive, graying mustache moved as he frowned, and his darker eyebrows lowered directly over his eyes.

"Miss, what in the h— world are you doing in here?" he demanded, stumbling over that one word before them.

She stood in front of her friend; Aryll half huddled behind her, with her hand on the elder girl's arm, no doubt as unnerved by their reception as she was. Zelda took a quick breath and returned his gaze, albeit hers was softer and less intense.

"Are you the manager?" she questioned, and despite her best efforts, some of her anxiety seeped into her tone.

He gave a slight nod. "I'm Bo. I own this place. But look here, we don't usually have ladies in here. Too much of a… distraction for the fighters, if you know what I mean."

"I'm sorry," replied she, and she found herself pressing one gloved fist over the other. "We only came because we wanted to ask you about Link… Link Wolfspaw. I understood he came here sometimes." She knew she was starting to ramble and she pressed her lips together. Then she felt her friend's hand on her arm again. "I'm a friend of his, and this is his sister," she added, gesturing to Aryll.

The severity of his expression eased when he heard the young man's name, and still more when she explained who they were. His eyebrows still lowered and his mouth a firm line, he told them, "We can talk in my office."

His office turned out to be a tiny partition in one corner of the gym, with hardly enough room for him to move around in, let alone his two visitors. Even Zauz's work space was larger than his. The desk was scattered with bills, an invoice or two, flyers and unopened mail. Bo grabbed a couple of folding chairs, set them up and brushed them hurriedly with a dirty rag. He invited the girls to seat themselves and then relegated himself to his larger chair which creaked with every slight movement and had a spot in the side of upholstered seat where the stuffing was coming out.

"What's this all about now? Look miss, I already told the police everything I know about the fella, and it ain't much."

"I know," Zelda replied. She moved her knotted fingers in her lap as she tried to keep his gaze. "But they haven't found him and they haven't any clues. Please, we just want to know when you last saw Link and if there was anything unusual when you did."

He chuckled; it was a deep, throaty sound which surprised them. "So you're trying to find him yourself, eh? You've got spunk! It might not get you anywhere, but I like it. Go on, ask whatever you like!"

Zelda took a long breath, shaking a bit as she released it. She managed a small smile of thanks as she began. "Link was last seen on the night of the tenth. When was he here last?"

Bo's eyes seemed further away as he leaned back a bit in his chair and recalled the past two weeks. He had one hand resting flat on top of the papers on his desk and he kept rubbing one finger back and forth like he had an itchy scab or something.

"He was here the night of the ninth."

"You're sure it was the ninth? Not any later?" she pressed further.

"It was the ninth," responded he, the bit of frown returning to his thin lips. "I was open later that night. My wife had her family over that night and I can't stand her family. So I told her I had to work late. It was probably eight-thirty or nine when Wolfspaw comes in and starts tearing away at the bags. Musta been mad about something. Not even the fighters go at the bags like he done." He shrugged. "Eh, it was probably a dame. Ain't that most guys' problem? Either that or money, or maybe both. Oh! Beg your pardon, miss," he said, looking a mite embarrassed.

After clearing his throat, he continued, "I'm no softie, but even I hated to see him like that. He comes in here sometimes, like you said, and been learning boxing. He's got a quick eye, good reflexes, and he can move like a wolf pouncing on a rabbit. He could fight a Goron man if he were a hundred pounds heavier. He's good, but he's raw. I took a liking to the kid and I've been teaching him. Except that night. He just went at the bags until he was worn out, and left again. I ain't seen him since."

"Oh…" Zelda mumbled. With each breath that left her she felt just that much smaller. "Is there anything else?"

"That's the lot," he returned. "Everything I told the police… except that part about my wife. Look here, that's not for publication, you understand?"

Both young women nodded and gave their word that they wouldn't mention it. Then they thanked him for taking time to speak to them, and rose from their chairs. He also stood and reached for the doorknob, but then he paused and looked intently at them.

"I dunno where this young fella of yours has gotten to, but I gotta warn you to be careful if you're going 'round these parts of the city. I have a daughter of my own and I wouldn't want her going near some of the mugs I know." He almost smiled at mention of his daughter, but the frown took over again.

"Thank you for your concern. Our chauffeur has been following us around all day and nothing has happened," Zelda informed him. She felt a stab of annoyance prickle at her. Why was everyone so fretful about her safety?

"I wouldn't stay 'round here at night, anyway," he said, and then finished opening the door for them.

He walked with the young women across the gym. Ferrus had come inside a bit further and, between glances to the owner's office, watched intently as the fighter and his partner practiced in the ring. He reluctantly pulled his attention away and stood up straighter when Zelda and Aryll approached, tipping his cap to them.

Before Bo turned away, he looked at the two girls once more and lowered his voice so that they could barely hear him over the other sounds around them. "Look here, when you find that fella of yours, tell him he'd better show up here again. He's gonna get soft if he stays away too long."

"I…I will," Zelda said with a slight nod. Her mind was on everything he'd said; here was yet another man who seemed to hold Link in some high regard, even so much as to care about him. Why did she have to find out only when he had disappeared?

Darkness had taken its hold on the city, which tried to fight back with millions of electric lights. The street on which the gym was located had few streetlamps and as a result was rather dim. A gentle snow had begun to fall, dusting the street, the sidewalks, cars, window ledges and every other surface. Zelda wanted to persist with her search until she found her dearest friend, but she was chilled, worn out, and her heart felt heavier than one of the larger punching bags inside the gym. Aryll was similarly affected, and she pulled at the elder girl's arm.

"Let's go home, Zelda," she urged.

"…All right. I suppose we should," the other young woman murmured.

She clasped Aryll's hand as they rode quietly through the streets. Her mind was awhirl as she thought of the day behind her. While she had more of an idea as to what had been bothering Link, she was regrettably no closer to knowing what had befallen him. He heart gave a lurch with each bump in the road. Where was he? What if he was colder, lonelier and with less hope than she was? She had his sister at her side and her family at home, but what about him? Did he know she was still waiting achingly for him to return?

She wanted to tell Ferrus to leave her somewhere, anywhere just so she could continue her quest. However, she didn't know where to go next and her mind would not cooperate with her efforts to figure it out. Perhaps it would be better if she could just go to sleep and begin again in the morning, though the thought of another night without knowing nearly caused her to reconsider.

There was more than the usual activity happening in the Harkinian home as the two young ladies returned. A suitcase was standing near the door, Techer was mounting the stairs with just a little bit more than his usual calm, slow gait, and there were voices in the upstairs hall. Moments later, Navi emerged, attired in her best coat and hat, and carrying a small bag; behind her was one the menservants carrying another suitcase. She paused briefly as she came abreast of the other two young ladies.

"Farewell, Miss Zelda, Miss Aryll," she said.

"So soon?" Zelda questioned. "Mother didn't indicate you'd be leaving today when she told me."

The petite governess' eyebrows dipped worriedly. "I was not expecting it either. But my sister has taken a turn for the worse and I must go to her. Mrs. Harkinian has kindly allowed me to leave immediately. I shall take the seven-fifteen train and be there tomorrow."

"Do you want the chauffeur to drive you down?" Aryll queried, having guessed the situation from what she'd heard. "He's only just brought us back."

"Thank you miss, but no. I already called a cab and it should be here by now. Merry Christmas, and I shall be praying to the goddesses for you both."

And then she was flying out the door, the manservant was carrying her things and a tiny flurry of snowflakes blew inside. Zelda sighed to herself and went upstairs with her friend. She found her brothers leaning against the top balustrade while tears dripped down the sides of their noses. Her heart went out to them and she pulled them close for a hug.

"Is she going to stay away forever?" a red-faced Joel demanded.

"Why would you ask that?" their sister questioned back, unsure as to the reason behind their sadness.

Neither boy answered at first, but merely pouted and looked down at the door which had shut behind Navi. They both scrubbed quickly at their faces, trying to look as though they hadn't been crying at all.

"She's awful strict," Zill complained.

"She won't let us do anything fun," added Joel.

"And she hid our slingshots!"

"All the better," Zelda declared. "Some of the maids were liable to quit when you kept shooting at them. She was right to take them away from you. But doesn't she take you on fieldtrips, to the movies and the park, too? You told me you liked those."

"Yeah, well…" Joel muttered, pulling in his bottom lip.

"She…reads to us, too," the younger brother said, perking up a bit. "Will you read to us, Zellie?"

She knew exactly what they were talking about; they liked to have a comic book or two before bed, and occasionally Navi indulged them by reading part of one to them, even though she preferred to regale them with a more wholesome story. Zelda grimaced slightly at the thought. Reading one of their comic books to them was painfully annoying.

First of all, said pieces of so-called fiction were littered quite liberally with punches, explosions, gunfire, the destruction of walls, cars and anything else that happened to be in the superhero's way in chasing the crooks, and had enough implausible situations to sink a battleship. The boys didn't like to wait for her to read the words in the little speech bubbles, as they were too impatient for what they called "the good parts", they were forever shouting out "Bam!" or "Blang!" or whatever other sound effect suited the situation, and a couple of times they accidentally hit her arm or cheek a glancing blow when they'd gotten too excited. Naturally, the guilty party had apologized rather profusely to her, at least partly so she would keep reading, but even then she still felt like she'd been through the wringer by the time she'd called an end to it.

"We'll see," she replied, not wanting to promise them anything just yet.

She already had a plan forming in her head about what to do with them. The next day, when she was feeling a bit better after a fair night's sleep, she carried it out by taking her brothers to Rupin's. She'd hoped to do some more checking and talking to more of the sales personnel, but she was continually thwarted by her brother's shenanigans. They upset a bin of umbrellas, tripped up a young man who was carrying a stack of boxes higher than his head, run into a waiter and two other patrons in the lunchroom, and spilled a huge jar of marbles all over the floor. When they stared up at the enticing toys and other decorations hanging from the great pillars in Fairyland, she spoke to them more sharply than usual and dragged them away.

However, even they complained that such a trip to the store wasn't half as much fun without Link there, even if he wasn't working on their favorite floor. When Zelda suggested a visit to Santa, they didn't seem too keen on the idea but agreed a little later, after they'd decided to find out what he looked like underneath the beard. With their sister keeping her eye on them and her promise resounding in their heads that she would take them home if they did one more naughty thing, their plan did not come to fruition.

She sighed and frowned to herself when she realized that her original plan was not going to work out as smoothly as she'd hoped. After spending a few hours with Zill & Joel in the store, she led them from the premises, as much for the sake of the preservation of sanity for the workers as for herself. She considered bringing them to the library so she could talk to and commiserate with Aryll, but thought it better not to inflict her brothers' propensity for mischief and mistakes upon either the golden-haired girl or the environs in which she worked.

On a whim of the moment, she decided to pay a visit the Maple Home for Children, the door of which she'd hardly darkened since Link's disappearance. She remembered how excited, eager and willing to help the children had been when the matron announced the performance to them. Without him to play the part of the monster, they still didn't have a plan. The staff had tried finding a substitute, but each one merely filled the part and didn't seem to get the role down correctly. They couldn't make the same noises and motions that Link had during the rehearsals, making the children scream with such terrified, delightful laughter.

"Perhaps we will have to cancel the performance this year," Mrs. Banji said sorrowfully.

"Oh, no! You mustn't do that!" Zelda exclaimed. She hated to think of anyone taking Link's place, but at the same time she didn't like to disappoint the orphans, especially when some of them had been worked so hard on Holly's dress and the monster's mask. "Perhaps…if you can't find anyone who the children like, we can just make it work out… somehow. It seems such a shame not to do it at all. Surely they'd like that better than nothing at all!"

She'd hoped that her brothers wouldn't be able to do as much damage in a place that was already filled with children. The other boys showed the two newcomers the mask they'd finished crafting, which had been hard going without Link to help them. Joel and Zill quickly became interested in trying it on and stumbling around with it over one of their heads, as it was simply too big to fit them properly. They made a game out of it, chasing anyone who would run before them.

The girls begged Zelda to try on the dress again, plying her with doleful eyes and hopeful smiles. The young lady's heart sank to the soles of her feet. She refused their offer almost sharply, but at their surprised faces she said something else softly; she knew she would cry if she wore the dress again. It reminded her too much of that day she'd been working on it with Link such a short distance away, and the funny, almost longing look on his face when he saw her in it. She had wanted to see if he would have the same reaction when she next wore it and ask him what he really thought, but now she could not.

When they were in the back of the car and on their way home, the boys looked up to her, their faces shining with excitement and mischief. "That mask fit us, really it did, Zellie!" Zill tried to persuade her.

Joel pointed to his brother and then to himself. "We could be the monster in that play!"

"Can we do Link's part? Huh, can we?"

Zelda burst into tears. She didn't want anyone to replace him, either in the play or any other aspect of her life; she wanted him! She wasn't sure the boys would understand, and she was too upset to explain anything. Their youthful faces suddenly scrunched up in alarm, her brothers dropped their line of inquiry and apologized profusely for whatever they'd said that made her cry. However, her tears were like a river; once they'd begun to flow, they could not as easily be dammed. As a result, it was a red-cheeked, moist-eyed Zelda who returned home with two boys who were unusually subdued.

Later that evening, her father called her into his study. Her eyes still felt scratchy and her head ached slightly after all the tears as she sat in one of his comfortable chairs and faced him. She wondered if he noticed the redness that her makeup didn't cover.

He too, settled into one of the large, leather upholstered chairs and leaned forward slightly, folding his hands together over his knees. "Zelda…" he began, and paused as though he still wasn't quite sure how to broach the subject after all.

"Yes, Dad?"

He rubbed the backs of his knuckles with the fingers of his other hand. "My dear, I know Link's disappearance has been quite a blow to you… Your mother told me of your efforts to search for him and I understand your desire to do something, but…"

Her heart beat quicker, her stomach did a mad flip-flop and she tensed up a bit.

"But do you really think it's wise?" he continued. "After all, neither the police nor the private detectives I hired have come up with anything. You may not want to consider this, but what if there is a reason for that?"

"Father, what are you trying to say?" she asked, her tone chilly because it was the only way she could keep from losing her composure again.

He pressed his lips together before opening them and telling her quietly, "Have you thought there might be a reason no one can find him? What if he does not want to be found?"

"I can't believe you're saying that!" she exclaimed, fixing him with eyes that smoldered and at the same time shimmered with unshed tears.

He'd tried to keep his expression stern, but he couldn't keep it up and his features seem to melt a bit. He hated to see his little girl so distressed, but it was the reason he broached the subject in the first place. Both he and his wife were concerned for her, that her despondency over and efforts to find her missing friend might become downright unhealthy for her. But he knew he couldn't just blurt that out either.

He tried to keep his tone even, though he felt his blood heat. "I don't say it lightly, Zelda. I'm just asking you to consider the possibility. I don't want you to be hurt…again. You remember Byrne?"

Her cheeks aflame, Zelda bit at her lip and then burst out, "Link isn't anything like him!"

But her father couldn't let it go just yet. "We were all fooled by him at first. It was only your good fortune that you found out before you married him. For all you know, Link may be hiding a dark secret of his own. I could tell something big was eating at him, something much more than trouble at work or being late with his rent."

"What did you say to him?!" she demanded, balling her fists.

He hesitated. "Zelda, it's better if you don't ask me that."

"Tell me!" she insisted, her tone raised.

His own thick brows lowered directly over his eyes as he scrutinized her. Ordinarily he would have chided her for her tone and insisted she show the customary respect. He felt a little qualm of guilt for causing her grief, but he was not sorry for having interrogated the young man earlier; after all, he still had his little girl's best interests at heart. But she was like her mother and once she'd determined something she wouldn't give up until she had attained her goal.

He took a long breath and said, "I asked him what his intentions were. He was mighty upset and when I pressed him further, he muttered something about not being able to marry you. Then he just stormed out. You see now why I am concerned for you?"

"Oh Father, how could you?!" she cried, and finally the tears spilled over the proverbial dam.

"Zelda, sweetie…" he murmured, his own mouth working and folding down at the corners. "Don't cry so, please. I cannot bear to see you like this."

He rose from his chair and went over to her, awkwardly trying to put his arm around her shoulders. She, however, shook off his touch and flew to her feet. She didn't want to admit that his words rankled her so because she'd already had similar doubts that still wouldn't leave her be.

"Link wouldn't do that! He wouldn't just leave, I know it!" she told him almost hysterically.

Whirling in her mind were thoughts of telling her father that Link would come back if he could, that he must be in trouble, that she had a terrible sinking feeling that they needed to find him before it was too late. Yet her throat was so choked up that she didn't think she could get the words out. She opened her mouth, but all that came was a great, heaving sob that shook her. Then she turned and fled from the room.

* * *

_I'm still not completely satisfied with my choice of using Byrne for the above mentioned role. I was trying to find a Zelda character who had certain villainous qualities but who also wasn't quite as bad as the real villains. I actually kinda like Byrne a bit. He starts out as a tough guy who enforces Cole's wishes, but eventually turns around, and even helps Zelda and Link at the end. He's a villain, but not an irredeemable one. _

* * *

01-05-2020 ~ Published (6,481 words)


	10. The Group

**Keeping Hope for Christmas - by Pseudo Twili**

Chapter 10: The Group

The next morning, Zelda learned that her father left earlier than usual so he could settle a strike at one of his plants. Her words with him the evening before were still on her mind and she was desperate to push them back. She cried for a little while, but then she set her lips in a firm line and tried to think of something else. She refused to let her own doubting thoughts get her down, nor those of her father.

She thought it best to get her brothers out of the house for a while so that her mother could rest without disruption. She had been planning to take them to the park, where she could also see if the lights on the Christmas tree there had been repaired. However, the lowering clouds spat snow at the city and the wind whisked the tiny frozen flakes around and into everyone's faces, making the outdoors a rather inhospitable place. Thus, she tried to steel herself mentally for more trouble as she decided to bring them to Rupin's again. The only good thing about it was that Aryll had no shift at the library and she came along too.

Joel and Zill delighted in going to and fro in Fairyland, for there was still so much more for them to see. They asked their sister if they were getting a Spinner-top Toy, a collection of the new, spiffy Beedle cap pistols, a Wild-branded exploration kit, the marvelous Spirit Train set (which was different from other model trains because these could actually float above the tracks) and anything else that caught their eye. Zelda and her parents had already completed the Christmas shopping for the boys and of course she knew what gifts they could look forward to, but she kept her answers to them very vague and uninformative.

She was antsy to ask more of the store's personnel about Link, but keeping her brothers out of trouble kept her more than preoccupied. They careened around a corner and knocked Mr. Tingle into a collection of large teddy bears; her cheeks pink, she apologized and pulled at her brother's collars until they did too. After the man had gone away, she suggested, more out of desperation than anything else, that they visit Santa again. Then she glanced up and saw Ferrus leaning against one of the display cases; apparently he had gotten tired of waiting for them in the car. Well, since he was there, he could at least be useful for something, she thought.

She smiled a bit to herself and turned to Aryll. "Can you take them to the line?"

"Sure, Zellie."

"Thanks. I'll be right back."

Weaving between throngs of shoppers, she marched up to Ferrus and tapped him on the arm. He was staring at the Spirit Train which was on display as it hovered and moved over the special tracks. He jumped and turned toward her. "Argh! Miss Zelda! I didn't know you were here."

She arched one of her slender eyebrows at him. "Where did you expect me to be? Out in the car?"

"Uhh… Erm.." stammered the red-faced chauffeur. "Um, it was cold out there?"

"That's fine," she said with a nod. She couldn't really begrudge him for wanting to come in when they'd probably be there for hours. "Since you're here though, I want you to do me a favor."

He seemed to have difficulty in keeping his eyes on her rather than straying to the train. "…Favor, Miss Zelda?"

"Follow me," she said.

She led him into the heart of Fairyland where Santa reigned; Ferrus cast one last look back at the model Spirit Train and did as she bade him. She came up to Aryll and the boys, where they had already been joined at the end of line by a few other children. The two little miscreants were looking much too pleased as they waited.

"You distract him from one side," Joel whispered conspiratorially into his brother's ear.

"And I'll pull his beard off," Zill hissed back.

"No, you distract him. I'll pull his beard."

"Okay, okay!"

They closed their mouths and assumed looks of complete and utter innocence as their sister glanced down at them. They turned their own gazes elsewhere, as if they weren't planning a thing.

Zelda faced Ferrus again. "I want you to stay with my brothers for a while. You can do that, can't you?"

"Yes, miss, I suppose so," he replied. He couldn't really refuse, and he was already forming a plan in his mind that he might persuade the boys to go and look at the train as soon as they'd seen Santa.

"Come on, Aryll. We're going to take a look around," the elder young woman told her. They moved off together, but after a couple of steps, Zelda stopped, turned back to Ferrus and cautioned him, "And for heaven's sake, don't let them pull his beard!"

Leaving the chauffeur to wonder at just what he'd agreed to do, the young ladies left the madness that was Fairyland and took themselves to another floor. While the toy department was likely the most madly hectic, the others were all doing a bustling business as well. As such, it was hard to talk to anyone for more than a few seconds before a customer came up behind them and urged them to hurry. In addition, they'd already talked to the sales personnel who knew Link best, and they didn't know where to turn next. Zelda let a frustrated huff escape her, some of her drive leaving her as well. She wished they could stay in the store until after hours and talk to them then, but of course that was out of the question. They went to the tearoom to have some cocoa and mull over their problem.

"Hasn't Link mentioned anyone else here at the store? Anyone he knows even just a little bit casually or socially?" she muttered, trying to jog her own brain as much as her friend's.

"I don't know… I think we've seen everyone working the counters and the other floor managers. I can't think of anyone else… Link works days like the others, so he probably doesn't know the night guards."

"Maybe this is just a dead end," Zelda muttered, pressing her lips together firmly. "But I don't know where to go next." And her heart dropped as she said it.

They sat in silence for several moments, little worried frowns tugging at their pinkened lips as their spirits flagged miserably.

"I'm beginning to wonder why I started this search in the first place, when all I've succeeded in doing is to make the ache in my heart grow worse. We're no closer to Link than we were the morning after he disappeared!" she exclaimed quietly. "Why didn't I listen to my mother? What did I hope to gain, when the police and the investigators Dad hired haven't found a thing?!" Then she sighed and let go of the crumpled napkin she'd held in her hand. "Oh, but that's not true. We did find out something…about Link. Aryll, why does it have to be so hard?"

She was almost whispering at that point, and was on the verge of tears again, but she didn't want to have a breakdown in such a public place. Aryll gripped her hand over the immaculate white tablecloth. She didn't know which was worse: to miss her brother as she did, or to see her friend suffering so.

A boy in his teens, wearing the same sort of uniform that all the doormen and elevator men wore approached the table. "Miss Harkinian? Miss Galen?" he ventured. The two rows of buttons running down on either side of his maroon coat gleamed with the many reflections of the lights in the tearoom.

"Yes, that's us," Aryll replied, giving her friend a chance to collect herself.

"Mr. Shad sent me to find you. He wishes to see you in his office," the lad told them dutifully.

The girls exchanged a look. Zelda thanked him and placed a colored rupee in his white-gloved hand; he bowed and departed, pocketing her tip with a grin stretching his lips.

"Mr. Shad!" the elder of the two exclaimed. "I knew I was forgetting someone. He knows Link too!"

"I wonder what he wants?"

"Who knows? Let's go find out!"

Aryll took one more sip of her cooled cocoa, but her friend was too excited and too busy wondering to pay attention to hers. They rose, Zelda hurriedly left ample rupees on the table to pay for their order, and they hurried up a couple of floors to the office of the store's general manager. They gave their names to the secretary, a Miss Misha, she flipped a switch on the intercom and announced their arrival, and then told them to go right in.

Shad was just rising from his swivel chair as they entered. "I'm glad you're still here," he said, offering them each a plush-backed chair. "I saw you in the store yesterday and I was told you were here the day before as well."

"Mr. Shad, is there something you know about Link?" Zelda queried, her heart tripping madly in her chest. She clutched at her handbag with trembling hands.

He half-leaned, half-sat on the edge of his desk as he looked at them. He was a man in his late thirties, handsome, wearing spectacles that made his blue eyes seem a little larger, and with neatly combed, wavy red hair that hadn't yet begun to show gray. He made a fine living as the general manager, even though he had to deal with problems of every sort, and he was devoted to his wife and their three children.

He took a breath. "No, I'm sorry. I last saw Link during the meeting on the tenth. I do not know where he is—"

Zelda gulped down what might have become a sob. "Then why did you summon us…?"

His brow furrowed a bit and he held up his hand. "I have some friends who may be able to help. Can you meet me at…" He paused. It was Saturday, so the store would close at five, rather than the usual seven or eight on weekdays. "…Say, at six o'clock, at one-four-four Lindor Road? It is a bar where my friends meet. I would introduce you to them and you may explain everything to them."

Zelda's heart pounder all the harder, and she scarcely remembered to take deep breaths. Aryll reached over and grabbed her hand between her own shaking fingers.

"Why are you doing this?" the elder of the two questioned.

Shad held their gaze for a moment before he answered slowly, "Though he is an exemplary employee, I also count Link amongst my friends. Like you, I have learned from the police that they have no leads and will not investigate further without some new evidence. I want to find out what happened to him as much as you do. My friends just may be able to help."

"Zelda…" the golden-haired girl began.

The other young lady placed a hand on her arm. She wanted to immediately jump at the chance, any chance to find Link, but she couldn't just yet. Though she was relatively certain that Shad's motives were honest, she couldn't help but wonder that he'd have connections to someone or a group of someones who could do more than the police.

"How do we know we can trust them?" she asked.

He bit down on his lip once, sighed and pressed both hands slightly behind him on the desk. "I would trust them with my life. You see, they helped me once…" He paused and lowered his tone, his lips curling downward. "…My wife…was being blackmailed by a fellow she'd known from her youth. He would have bled us dry and driven her mad… Finally she told me about it and I tried to find the man, with no success. Then my wife was hurt and in the hospital." He ran his hand through his hair.

"I started drinking one night, going from one bar to another until everything was a blur. I must have wandered into this particular bar and when I left, a couple of guys jumped me. But these friends of mine saw it and rescued me before I got too bad a beating. After I had sobered up and realized what I fool I'd been, they continued helping me. They saved both my wife and me by finding the blackmailer and turning him over to the police, while they also recovered the papers he was holding over my wife's head and returned them discreetly to us."

The girls' eyes widened slightly at the quietly frank admission. Their expressions softened and they glanced at each other. Aryll's eyes were pleading, but even then the other girl already knew what they should do.

She turned her gaze back to Shad. "These friends of yours… Who are they? Are they police? Private investigators?"

"A couple of them have military backgrounds. Another is a former policeman. They are all private citizens… who try to help those in need wherever they can."

Zelda inhaled a breath and released it slowly. "We will meet you at six o'clock."

His concentrated frown eased up a bit. "Very good. I shall see you then." He pushed himself off his desk. "Now if you will excuse me, I have much to do here before the day is done."

The young ladies rose and stepped forward. "Thank you for seeing us, Mr. Shad," Zelda said, and then they swept out of the door he held open for them.

It was hours until the appointed time, and suddenly the girls didn't know what they should do to fill that emptiness ahead of them. However the beginning portion of those hours were all but decided for them as they returned to Fairyland to check up on Ferrus and his impromptu charges. The boys had succeeded in their little plan to unmask, or rather, debeard Santa. They were sitting on a bench on the very edge of Fairyland, where they had been deposited by an irritated elf, while a nervous, sheepish chauffeur stood nearby and kept looking around for Zelda and Aryll.

"Did you see his face?"

"He was so mad!"

"I didn't know Santa had red hair…"

"He's almost bald though."

The none too quietly whispered words between the brothers ceased immediately when they spotted their sister. They glanced up at her and then away, as if they hadn't done anything.

Ferrus had to fill her in on what had happened. "…I tried to stop them, Miss Zelda. I really did. But I wasn't close enough and they didn't listen to me anyway."

Zelda fixed her scrutinizing gaze on her rascally brothers. "Zill, Joel, I hope you know you've been very naughty and you will not go unpunished. Apologize to Ferrus right now."

They protested, but she was unyielding. They mumbled their apologies to the chauffeur.

"And you will each have to write a letter to Mr. Batreaux—Santa, telling him how sorry you are. Is that clear?"

The boys nodded and thought their shoes were the most interesting thing in the world at that moment. Zelda would have preferred to apologize to Batreaux right then and there, but she didn't want to interrupt him again when he had such a line of children waiting before him.

"I really should just take you two home," she said, her reproachful expression fading somewhat. "But I suppose we should go get some lunch." She held up her finger and waved it at them warningly. "You two had better behave, though, or it's back home for you."

"We'll be good, Zellie," they attempted to assure her, beaming bright, innocent smiles that she didn't buy.

They left the store and found a restaurant about a block down the street. The boys managed to control their tendency for mischief, until they thought it would be fun to throw their string beans at each other instead of consuming them. That wouldn't have been quite so bad, except that one of the beans Joel tossed toward his brother missed by more than a foot and instead hit a passing waiter. He stood there, with the saucy bean sticking to his white jacket as he glared at the boys, who were chortling up a storm behind their hands. Zelda apologized and made her brothers do the same. She promised that she would take them straight home, but when they looked hopeful at that prospect, she told them they had to eat their string beans first.

"But…! But, they're disgusting!" Zill whined.

"They're like…" said Joel, adding his rupee's worth. He thought for a moment. "They're like green worms!"

"You've never had a problem with worms before," their sister replied. "Especially when you left them in that glass in my bathroom."

Aryll wrinkled nose and wore an expression of shocked horror. "Eww!"

"That was Link's idea," Zill told her, hoping to distract his sister. "He was showing us how to dig for worms so we could go fishing."

The brothers looked at each other and shared a grin as they remembered the shriek she'd let out when she discovered the invertebrates wriggling around in her bathtub. She'd come storming out in her dressing gown, a livid expression on her face, searched out her brothers and pulled them by their ears to her bathroom. She made them pick up every last worm and take them outside; as they scuttled out they'd also heard her asking one of the maids to give the tub a good scrubbing. When they told Link about it the next morning, he suppressed a laugh, scowled and then told them it hadn't been a good idea.

Her mouth had gone a bit slack at the corners at mention of her dear missing friend, but then she pressed her lips into a firm line again and lowered her brows. "I'm sure he didn't tell you to put them in my bathroom, though. He meant for you to keep them in a cool place until the next morning when you used them."

"He didn't tell us where to put them, so we had to think of a good place," admitted Joel. "That sure was a pip, wasn't it?!"

She didn't bother to give reply to that question. "You two haven't made me forget about your beans, and you can stop trying to hide them under your napkins. You will eat them, and no arguments or distractions will help you."

It took them seven times as long to eat the string beans than it should have. Even though she conversed with Aryll the whole time, Zelda was ever watchful that they didn't slip the green vegetables into a coat pocket or stuff them between the seat and back of their chairs. Zill dropped one of his on the floor, almost on purpose, and was pleased when she said he couldn't eat it then. Joel was about to follow his brother's example when she warned them that if either of them let another bean fall, she would order another small plate of the green wormy things and they would still have to eat them.

Finally they'd consumed every last string bean, which, if they had been forced to admit to it, wasn't nearly as bad as they'd made it out to be. Zelda left a large tip, hoping that would help make up for her brother's misbehavior, and the four departed the restaurant. The boys tried to sweet talk their sister into taking them somewhere else, but this time she remained resolute in her promise…no to mention the snow was still trying its best to white out the city. As soon as they arrived home, she sent them straight up to their room with instructions to begin their apology notes to Batreaux.

The servants had begun bringing out the Christmas lights and decorations from both attic and basement, as per Giselda's instructions. Zelda saw the activity and threw herself into managing and helping; it was partly a habit with her, as she had always liked to help with that seasonal task, but also it was because she had helped put them away and remembered exactly where everything was located. Only when everything was pulled from storage and piled up in boxes in cases in the downstairs hall did she stop and allow herself to think.

It was the Harkinian family's custom to put up their Christmas tree and other assorted decorations one week before the holiday itself, where they remained until about the middle of January. Normally, Zelda loved seeing it all go up: the lights, the garlands, the snowflakes and glass angels, the fresh holly with its bright red berries, and most of all the tree, a sharply scented evergreen which was bedecked with all manner of glittering, shining ornaments, bows, tinsels and the newest thing in lights. Just earlier in the month she'd been so looking forward to it, and had imagined pulling Link into the activity, knowing he would probably grumble but comply with her request anyway, all the while hiding a tiny smile.

And that had only been the beginning of her plans. She'd wanted to go on more walks in Oracle Park where they could pass under all the bare branches and appreciate the great Christmas tree, to sit in one of the quiet little cafés and watch both the people and the snow, to skim the ice at Malo Plaza with just him to whirl her to the music which was faint behind the sounds of everyone else and to have the largest tree in all the city stretching up to the heavens just above them, to go window shopping with him and Aryll and try to figure out by innocent queries what he wanted for Christmas, to go up to Linebeck Tower again and gaze down at all the lights, and perhaps closest of all was her wish to perform in the children's play with him as her beloved monster.

After his disappearance she'd tried to hold fast to the believe that he would return to her, yet with each passing day and no news, some of that hope gave way to doubts in her heart. All her wonderful plans seemed for naught, and as she realized it all over again she wanted to weep. Seeing that Techer had the distribution of the decorations and such well in hand, Zelda escaped the bustle by fleeing upstairs. She checked briefly checked in on her brothers and then retreated to her own room. Huddling up on her window seat, she stared out the window at the mesmerizing, steady descent of so many millions of snowflakes, while warm, liquid drops cascaded more slowly down her cheeks.

Aryll knocked and entered a little later, after having made a phone call to her parents. She'd been hoping to visit them later on Christmas or the day after, but with all the snow and likely more to come, the prospect of traveling was melting like a snowman left in the sun. Her parents would have liked nothing better than to see her again, but neither of them wanted her to take any undue risks to get there. The result was that she felt immersed deeper in her sadness, and tears shone in her eyelashes too as she met Zelda's eye.

The golden-haired young lady sighed and wiped at her eyes as she plopped on a nearby chaise lounge. "So…how did the boys do with their apology notes?"

Zelda sniffled too and turned away from the window to face her friend. Her legs dangled down and one of her feet had fallen asleep. "They're…something, all right. You've probably never seen such horrendous spelling! Their letters are on my desk there, if you want to take a look."

Aryll hopped up and looked over the few papers lying atop said desk; it was not quite orderly, but then it was much better than some desks they'd seen. She looked over the pieces lying there, locating at the last the two letters, with somewhat large, childish letters scrawled thereon. However, something else had caught her eye and she reached out with a few fingers to withdraw it from another paper lying partly on top of it.

"What is this?" she asked, glancing in her friend's direction. "It looks like a poem, but it has no title."

Zelda slid from the window seat but remained there. "It is a poem."

"May I…? Is it all right if I read it?"

The elder girl paused for a second as she considered. It was a precious thing to her, but she and Aryll were too close of friends for her to fear she couldn't trust the other young woman. "Sure," she replied with a little hitch in her voice. "Can you read it aloud?"

Aryll nodded and dipped her head a bit as she gazed down on the sheet of paper. She was sure she recognized the hand in which it had been written, but she didn't say anything about that just yet. "'_Christmas is her favorite time of year,_'" she began, proceeding through the several verses and ending with, "'_She is my lady, I am her knight; I will always be none but… thine._'"

She set the paper down again, before her tears could splatter on it. She took one look at her friend and saw that she wasn't holding back her own quiet grief. The boys' letters forgotten, she took a couple of steps closer to the window seat.

"Oh, Zelda… That was beautiful," she murmured. "Did… did Link write it?"

The elder of the two nodded as another large tear slipped from each turquoise eye. "Last Christmas…it was his gift to me."

Aryll joined her on the window seat and gripped her hand, which was cool to the touch. "It's too lovely for words. I couldn't help but think as I read it though… um, are you the 'she' in the poem?"

Zelda shrugged slightly. "I don't know. I thought of it, because it's so romantic, you know, but if that's so, he's ascribed to me many more virtues than really are mine."

The younger girl thought the verses perhaps weren't too far off the mark after all, but she kept that to herself. They sat there for a little while longer, until Zelda seemed to shake herself and slipped off the seat.

"I came in here feeling sorry for myself," she said, looking a bit embarrassed and with her cheeks quite pink. "But all I've done is feel worse about everything. This is silly! I act like we've lost all hope, but now there's more than ever."

Aryll sniffled, mopped her face and put her handkerchief away. "Mr. Shad's friends, of course. I hope…they'll be able to help us somehow…"

"I'm going back downstairs and help put up the Christmas decorations and make sure everything looks just as festive as can be," Zelda declared, though she gulped on another sob as she did. "Do you want to come with me?"

The other girl agreed to that prospect, and for what remained of the afternoon, they kept themselves busy. They even allowed Zill and Joel to come downstairs so they could see everything. The boys were disappointed that the gifts were not yet placed under the tree and they made it a game to try and discover where they were hidden. Their sister assured them that they'd never find their presents, and it seemed to them that she was too pleased as she said it.

Gustaf arrived home a bit sooner than usual. He ruffled his sons' hair, checked in on Giselda, said hello to Aryll, and then asked his daughter to accompany him to his study. Having not seen him since the evening before, when they parted on such tense terms, she felt herself stiffen a bit as she followed him wordlessly. He offered her a seat by the fire and then took the one opposite. He clasped his hands together, much as he had before, but he kept moving his thumbs back and forth. Silence hung in the air between them for a few moments before he made his tongue work.

"Zelda, I am sorry about last night. I realize that I was a bit rough on you. All I want you to understand is that your mother and I are concerned about you."

Her heart gave a quick beat and she opened up her clenched hands. "I'm sorry, too, Dad. I'm afraid I got myself pretty worked up." She gave him a wan little smile. "You don't have to worry. I only found out the same things the detectives already asked. I guess I knew that from the start, but I just had to try anyway. But now there's something else. Mr. Shad, the general manager of Rupin's, told us he knows some people who might be able to help." She glanced up at the clock on the mantelpiece. "Aryll and I will be leaving pretty soon to meet up with him and meet his friends."

His eyebrows lowered and his mouth pulled down. "Do you think that is wise, my dear? What do you know of these people? What can they possibly do?"

"I asked the same thing of Mr. Shad. But he reassured me and told me how they'd once helped him. I know it will be all right, Dad. Perhaps they will be able to help where the police have not. There can't be any harm in trying, can there?"

"I still don't like it. Where is this place you're going?" he questioned. She told him and his frown deepened. "That's not a part of town I'd want you to frequent. Have you seen the papers and how many crimes take place down there? It's even happening in our neighborhood too."

"Dad, I'm twenty years old. I'm not a little girl anymore!"

He sighed. She would always be his little girl, even when she was thirty, forty or fifty. "I know. But I suppose it doesn't hurt to tell me that every once in a while. I'm only worried about you, my dear. I don't want you walking into danger."

She rose from her chair and kissed him impulsively on his crinkled brows. "I know you are, but I can take care of myself, you know."

"Perhaps I should accompany you, hm?" he queried almost hopefully, his brows unpuckering slightly at her touch.

"No, I don't think so," she replied. She crouched by the side of his chair and clasped his hand. However, to make amends for her blunt refusal, she added, "But if it'll make you feel better, I will call you promptly at six-thirty and let you know everything is all right."

"If you are late, I will not hesitate to go down there myself and find you," he warned her.

"I understand," she replied with a nod. She rather expected such a response from him.

It was still a little while until she had to leave, so she spent that time telling him about their little investigation. She told him first about the card in Link's drawer that she was sure he would have taken if he'd been there, and about everything she'd heard from both Batreaux and Bo. None of it led to Link's whereabouts or to the reason he'd disappeared, but at the same time she felt that her searching and questioning hadn't completely been for naught.

"That is mighty peculiar," the graying gentleman said as he rubbed his chin. "But it seems to match up with what he mumbled that evening. He said he would never want to hurt you, but he said he couldn't marry you. He paled and was hardly listening to me after that. What on earth was bothering the lad?"

That was the question which was constantly on Zelda's mind, a question which she'd wished hundreds of times that she'd put to him. Her heart gave a pang each time she thought of it. But it seemed as though Link certainly had a fondness for her, which perhaps had been tearing him apart.

Then the big grandfather clock in the downstairs hall bonged the quarter hour and both young ladies threw on their coats and pinned on their hats. Gustaf had Ferrus get the car out again and gave the young fellow strict instructions not to leave until both girls were safely with him. Zelda called her father "a worried but dear old man" and he gruffly told her to be off.

The traffic was hectic, and with the chauffeur taking as many side streets as he could, they arrived just a few minutes after the hour. Shad must have been waiting just inside the building, for as soon as they'd pulled up, he was already out on the sidewalk and stepping forward to open the car door. He was still wearing his hat and topcoat, as he had just recently arrived himself; the snow blew into the brim of his homburg and dusted his shoulders. His expression eased up as he beheld the girls.

"I'm glad you made it," he said. "Please, won't you come inside?"

The young ladies followed him and he held the door for them. The interior was paneled with reddish wood, and had an orderly, well-scrubbed look. Most of the tables were occupied by two or more people, with still more perched on the barstools. It was all rather subdued and quiet, save for the jukebox someone had set to playing a melancholy tune in the corner. It wasn't at all what either of the girls had expected, but then their experience with bars was restricted to what they saw in the movies or pictures.

Meanwhile, Shad led them over to the bar, behind which a tall, well-built woman expertly filled glasses, mopped up the counter, and listened to anyone who wanted to bend her ear. She had skin as dark as any Gerudo, long, dark red hair that was pulled back in many braids and a sort of bun, and quick green eyes that could cut right through a body. She wore an apron with two-colored squares, a few lines and a couple of swirls, the same as the symbol on the sign outside; underneath that was a pale-colored blouse with sleeves rolled up to the elbows and a long, dark gray skirt. A matching jacket hung on a hook behind and to the side of the bar.

"Welcome to Telma's Place. I'm Telma," she said in a voice which was rich and a bit deep, but not so much as a man's.

"Um…good evening," Zelda replied, feeling that she had to say something.

The proprietress fixed her eyes first on the young ladies and then on the gentleman standing behind them. "So you are the two Shad told us about, are you? I could tell you weren't here for the usual thing!" she chuckled drily, eyeing their obviously youthful appearances. "This is not the best place to talk, though. Come, follow me to the back room. There we can speak in private."

She moved to the far end of the bar and lifted the piece at the end so she could walk right out. Zelda and Aryll traded a quick look for each other, but Shad again assured them it was perfectly safe and so they followed the proprietress. She was just calling to her employee, a Mr. Barton, to take over the bar for her.

Then she ushered her guests through a curtain and past a door to a small room with a rather large table in the middle, chairs arranged lazily around it, and boxes and crates piled up in the corners. A simple light fixture hung from the ceiling and another lamp was on the table, making the room not quite dim. Three other people were already present, and between them flowed a rumble of conversation, which faded at Telma's entrance. Three pairs of eyes fixed themselves on the newcomers and the two of them who were men rose from their seats.

"Everyone, these are the young ladies Shad told us about," the bar mistress declared.

The two men moved forward, respectfully shook the hand of each girl, and introduced themselves. The third member of their group stood and, trying to summon something that was not her usual scowl, also grasped their hands and blurted out her name. Zelda and Aryll also offered their names, and then Telma urged them to sit down and take a load off. Even when they were all gathered around the table, the two young ladies sat very near each other and kept their mouths closed as they looked at each of the people around them.

With one fist on the table, Telma looked at them. "You're probably wondering what we can possibly do for you, aren't you, hon? Would you be more at ease if we tell you a bit about ourselves?"

Aryll nodded slightly, and Zelda said, "That might help. Go ahead."

The redheaded woman gave her other friends a look, letting them know they wouldn't get off. "I've kicked around a lot. Married a couple of men who turned out to be finks. The first one got run over one night when he was blind drink. It was no loss to me. I was at one point or another a wardrobe mistress, a bouncer, a milkman…whatever I could get my hands on, but he would drink all our rupees away. The second one at least had the decency to leave me some insurance, which is how I bought this place. It usually a rough lot that comes in here, but I hear of what goes on in this city. I know the people hereabouts and they know me. If a wife calls up and wants to know where her husband is, I can tell her even if he isn't at my place. I hear about heists and such before they hit the papers. And I know when someone's been hiding from the law as he's about to set foot over my threshold."

After finishing her much-abbreviated life story, Telma looked to the man on her left and he began. His name was Rusl; he had lean face, kindly eyes and blonde hair that was beginning to gray. He was formerly a lieutenant on the police force and had been retired on half pension when he'd been injured and could not walk without a considerable limp. He found odd jobs to support his family, but eventually settled into the life of a private detective, and he kept a number of contacts with friends still in the police force. He'd grown up in a part of town near the slums and he was familiar with crooks, derelicts, drunks and the like.

Next was the dark-haired, serious-faced woman who hadn't lost all her youth and who held herself with strict rigidity. Ashei had followed in her father's footsteps, she having been a sergeant in the pride of Hyrule, the Marines. But then her father received a dishonorable discharge after he'd fallen afoul of one rotten egg who happened to be his superior, which had devastated him. She tried to clear him of the charges and been successful in exposing the dishonest man, but her reward was that her own reenlistment application was turned down. A bitter taste in her mouth, she instead turned to factory work, where she was one of the many who helped make armaments for the military. She lived a few blocks away with her father, who was a broken man.

Auru, the gray-headed man with expression that seemed both stern and wise, had a small goatee and two stripes of facial hair on either side of his mouth. He had been in service in Hyrule's Army Corps for sixty years, reaching the rank of captain before being required to retire, though he was still as keen-eyed and quick as anyone half or even one-third his age. His wife had passed away and his children were long since grown with families of their own, and so to keep himself busy he had found a part-time job at a local radio station to make news and weather reports. He too lived nearby, in fact, he had found a place at the very rooming house where Rusl's wife worked.

These unlikely three were wont to come to Telma's Place and eventually got to know each other and the bar mistress rather well. They each saw a lot of trouble, heartache and failings in their daily lives, but it was when a man walked out of the bar and into the path of a car that shook the little group. The dead man had just been in there, pouring out his sorrows and crying into his beer because his wife had left him and taken the children, and no one had tried to help him. After that, the foursome tried to help a few of the people they came across. And together they knew all the crooks, bums, and hard workers alike who were known in the whole city.

A while later, Shad entered the picture and became the fifth member to their group. His greatest asset lay in his knowledge of and connections to other businessmen and agencies, which was most useful when they were trying to track someone down or were dealing with a high-class crook.

"But why do you go to all this trouble?" Zelda questioned. "Can you do more than even the police?"

Telma fixed her in a green-eyed gaze. "The police all are well and good, but even what they can do is sometimes limited. They must operate within the law, whereas all the crooks and con artists are not so constrained. And some people are either afraid to cooperate with the police, or have some shady reason of their own."

Rusl didn't even blink at that description of his former employment. "That is true. It is sad that we have reached such a point that we, as private citizens, can reach further than the arm of the law. But we cooperate with the police whenever possible. My old friends on the force are never more than a phone call away."

Zelda wasn't sure if she wanted to know the answer to her next thought, but she asked anyway. "How do you get this… information for the people you help?"

"It all depends," replied Auru in his deep, weathered tone. "Mostly it involves a few rupees slipped from one hand to another, or a bottle of wine for a thirsty man, or the trade of one bit of information for another. The stoolies and derelicts can hardly stand up to a stiff wind, let alone under questioning or at seeing the color of our money. Only on occasion do we resort to some…erm, slight intimidation, shall we say."

She was glad that at least they didn't stoop so low as to beat up anybody. "Do you require payment?"

Telma shook her head emphatically and managed to shake the table in so doing. "Not at all, honey. We don't charge a thing. We get along all right anyway."

"The reward is in the work itself," Auru said, a small smile creeping to his lips. "Many of the people we run across can't afford the extra rupees. But they pay us in gratitude. Those who do have more are equally grateful, and sometimes they do express it with a little bonus."

No one mentioned that the "bonuses" usually went to a family that was in financial straits for reasons of injury, a death, loss of a job, or any other such plight.

"Is it just you five?" Aryll queried.

Ashei's frown eased up slightly as she responded, "There are a few more who work with us, but they're not always in the city, as they must look after their tribes and such. They're quite good at what they do, however."

Telma locked glances first with Zelda and then the younger girl. "Don't you think it's time to tell us your problem now, honey?" asked she, her tone calm and even. "Tell us about your missing friend and we'll do all we can."

The two young women traded looks. The elder one had made up her mind already and Aryll nodded to her. Zelda inhaled deeply. "It's Link," she said. "He's my dear friend and Aryll's brother. He's been missing since the night of the tenth. I last saw him that evening when he dropped me off at home. The police say that he dismissed the cabbie at the sidewalk, and when they questioned the other cab drivers, none of them said they'd picked him up, much less seen him. They couldn't find a single lead, nor could my father's private investigators. And then someone broke into his and Aryll's apartment—"

"No one broke in. Someone must have used Link's key," the golden-headed girl interjected.

Zelda nodded and continued in a rush, "Oh, yes, that's right. It wasn't forced. Anyway, whoever got in there took all Link's things. The police concluded that he'd been the one to do it, even though we told them it wasn't something Link would do. They say there hasn't been evidence of foul play, so the case is dead until something new comes up. But I know—we know—that he wouldn't leave like that!" Her tone was rising a bit as reliving it made her emotions tangle amongst each other.

"Don't forget about the card," Aryll remined her.

The elder girl took another quick breath as she glanced at her friend. "That's right. I found a card I'd given Link for his birthday still in his room. I gave it to the detective, but he said it didn't mean anything. But it does! If Link had been in his apartment and taken all his things, including the mementos that are missing, I think he would have taken the card as well, since he thought enough of it to keep it. He was the only one who knew where he kept it. He would never disappear like this and make us worry so! Something must have happened to him!" And then, despite her resolve to keep herself together, she felt a tear run down her cheek.

"I can attest to that as well," Shad quietly added. "Link has worked at the store for six years and counting and has always been on time. On one occasion he tried to work with a fever of over a hundred. And he agreed to Rupin's settlement that left Link with the short end, just to end the strike and so that everyone could go back to work. No, there is something strange indeed about his disappearance. I cannot believe he would suddenly turn to crime after such exemplary work."

"He wouldn't leave like that," Aryll declared, raising her eyes to meet the gazes of those around her. "He… he promised me he'd never leave me again…"

Her breath hitched and she felt her eyes misting. Zelda found her hand and held it there at the side of their chairs. A couple of the men cleared their throats nervously.

Telma reached over and patted the shoulder of the girl seated next to her. "You don't have to worry now, dearies. We'll do everything we can to help. Do you need a hanky, honey?"

But Zelda was already fishing hers from her pocketbook. She blew her nose and dabbed carefully at her eyes; she was glad she hadn't bothered with much makeup, as it would have been ruined. "I'm sorry… And thank you. You're too kind. I still don't know why you'd do this for us, who are complete strangers."

Ashei folded her arms. "We already told you. We do it because we want to help. It's smaller than a drop of water when you compare what we do to all the problems in the world, but it's better than doing nothing, yeah?"

Zelda managed the smallest of smiles. "I think you'd all get along just fine with Link," she murmured, with a sound that was not quite a laugh. She captured another gulp of air. "Um, don't you need us to tell you more? We know some of the things he was doing before he disappeared…"

"That won't be necessary," Telma replied. "You've given us enough to work on."

"I will check with my old contacts in the force and see if there is anything else," said Rusl. "One thing you might do for us, though… Do you have a picture of the young man? Link… what is his last name?"

Zelda told him and then produced a snapshot from her handbag. It was a photo she had personally taken of both him and Aryll. While it was not of the quality of a professional photographer, she had been proud of her work. It was in black and white, of course, but one day she thought she'd get one of the new color cameras. The siblings were standing next to each other in the library of Zelda's home, and had been looking at a map together. Aryll's hair hung about her face in the nicest curls, her sweet, docile smile curving her lips and transforming her features. Even Link had the ghost of a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, as Zelda had caught him unawares. He usually scowled and turned his back when anyone pointed a camera in his direction.

"Ah, that's fine," Rusl told her with a nod as he examined the photograph. "It's strange…but he looks a little familiar, like I've seen him somewhere before." He glanced up and saw everyone looking pointedly at him, as though they expected him to say something more. He gave a shrug and passed the picture so that the others could see it too. "I've no idea where though. Hopefully it will come back to me."

The two young ladies each released a small, disappointed sigh.

Then Auru cleared his throat. "I hate to ask this, but there is one thing we must clear up. Err…how do I put this as kindly as possible? That is to say… this young man of yours… he might have met someone, or saw someone he wasn't supposed to see. You see… sometimes we must bring sad news to the people we try to help."

Zelda squeezed Aryll's hand, knowing she couldn't keep Zauz's warning to herself any longer. "You mean he might be… dead?" she queried, hardly above a whisper. "Th-the police did mention that… but I suppose after the break-in-that-wasn't, they adopted a new theory…"

The blonde girl was shaking. "N-no… It cannot be…" she gasped.

Reaching her other hand over and placing on Aryll's arm, Zelda continued, "I don't believe for one moment. He's… He's out there somewhere. We need to find him!" Her breaths came quicker with each sentence, and she had to stop because her emotions threatened to overwhelm her again.

"Yes, of course. I'm sure it will be all right," Telma said, her own tone soothing. "And that's exactly what we intend to do. We will find him for you."

If the others members of the group objected to her making such a promise, they kept silent. Ashei, Auru and Telma each took a good look at the photo and Rusl assumed the young lady that he would have it back to her just as soon as he had a few copies made.

"That's all right," Zelda replied, glad for something to take her mind from the nearly insurmountable task of keeping her tears back. The truth was that she wanted the picture back very much, but she wanted Link even more, so she let him do whatever he needed with it.

"We'll call you when we know something," the bar mistress said. "What is your number?"

"Hylia one, one, one, nine," the elder girl said, and waited while Rusl and Ashei took out pencils and jotted it down. Then she added, "Aryll is staying with me."

They thanked the group once more, and Rusl and Shad escorted them out to their waiting car. Not one of the group wished to distress the young ladies any further, but the former wanted to make sure the latter made it safely back home. They were in a neighborhood that as not a nice place for any young woman to frequent, and if Link had run into trouble, they might find themselves in it as well. Zelda was almost in the car when she remembered that she had to call her father, and so she went back inside briefly to do just that.

Both girls were exhausted by the time they reached the house. They had a bit of late dinner, Zelda reported the outcome of their meeting to her father, and then she joined her friend upstairs. Neither of them wanted to say much, as they already felt too wrung-out as it was; they only wished for a dreamless sleep to take them both and hold them until the morning.

For the next couple of days they waited with near-breathless anticipation for any word from the group. Every time the phone rang, one or both of them would jump and hasten to answer it, but each time they were disappointed when it was just a call for Giselda, or it was someone from Gustaf's office with an urgent, or not-so-urgent, message for that gentleman. Once Navi called and reported that she expected to return about a week into the new year.

Then, on Monday, they received some news, though not from the source they were expecting. It was Detective Zauz who bade the young ladies come to his office. Since Aryll was working her shift at the library, Zelda went downtown alone, her heart battering at her ribcage all the time. Zauz had not elucidated his reasons for requesting her, and in spite of her best efforts to stamp out the unwelcome thought, she was afraid that the police had found a body. Then her heart felt like it was blocking up her throat as she turned through the corridors to get to the detective's office. Her fears were unfounded, as she quickly learned, but she was no more prepared for the new information than she would have been to identify a corpse.

"There was another robbery at Rupin's," reported Zauz, his red brows crouched above his eyes. His mouth was twisted downward. "The evidence and a witness mark your friend as one of the thieves."

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_This chapter and the last were originally going to be one, but as I got further along I realized that wasn't going to happen. It's true that my chapters are often long ones, but in general I do like to keep them at a 10,000 word limit. That way you, my readers, hopefully won't feel too inundated with such great expanses of words all at once, haha!_

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01-07-2020 ~ Published (9,130 words)


	11. Picture of the Past

**Keeping Hope for Christmas - by Pseudo Twili**

Chapter 11: Picture of the Past

"What did you say?" Zelda queried breathlessly, wishing she really had heard him incorrectly.

The detective's scowl deepened, he growled under his breath, and then he repeated himself.

She felt for the chair she'd known was nearby and sank into it. "That cannot be…" she murmured. Then she lifted her eyes which pleaded silently with him. "You must be mistaken, Detective! Why would he—"

"Miss Harkinian, are you going to let me tell you or not?!" he demanded, his face only two shades brighter than his hair. "I did not call you here to have you interrupt me every other sentence!"

She pressed her lips together, biting back both an apology and a retort.

He cleared his throat in aggravated, agitated fashion, and glared at her as if daring her to speak again before he was through. "The witness, who was on the street when the crooks were running out the side entrance, saw them and gave us a description on one of them that matches your friend. And there were some broken glass from one of the display cases. We found only a few of Wolfpaw's fingerprints on some of the shards. And before you ask, I assure you that they are his prints. He has no criminal record, but with the fingerprints from his apartment and that card you gave me, the lab boys had no trouble in matching them.

"In fact, I have looked into all the cases of burglary and robbery in the last few days. Several of them have a similar M.O. and in each one, Wolfspaw was careless or stupid enough to leave something behind. One time it was a watch, another time a set of keys, one of which I have confirmed fit into the lock of his apartment. And each time his fingerprints were on something. When the occasional witnesses have seen one of the thieves, the descriptions they give also match Wolfspaw. Looking at all this, it might seem obvious that he's turned rogue."

Unable to keep silent any longer, Zelda burst out, "No, Detective Zauz! He would never do that, I tell you! His work at the store was his life. He wouldn't give it up, even when my father could have found him something much better. He's been there for six years, you know."

"All the more time for him to consider robbing the place."

"But he didn't have anything to do with the first robbery at the store, right?"

"Doesn't mean a thing. He might have seen something that he kept to himself and then used it to blackmail the crooks into taking him in with them."

She bit at her lip again, but she folded her arms resolutely. "No matter what you say, I will not believe that of him! I know him too well."

In the moment of silence that followed, the detective's frown became unsteady at the corners. He paced the few steps between his filing cabinet and the window. "You may be right after all."

"…Pardon me?" she said, almost choking on a breath and truly doubting that she'd heard him correctly this time.

He paused, grimaced and growled under his breath. "It's too pat. It's as though someone has laid out a trail of crumbs and expects us to follow them without considering anything else. And I refuse to be led like a stupid beast with a carrot in front of its nose."

Zelda's mouth hung open. "I didn't think you'd ever agree with me, Detective!"

"I am not agreeing with you," he returned with a pronounced frown. "I merely think this whole thing stinks with a something I don't quite know yet. But I have a good nose for this sort of thing and I've never been wrong yet. I must investigate further before I can decide anything. My captain says it's an open and shut case, but after spending all this time on it I'm not sure I agree with that completely."

"I don't know what to say…" she breathed, staring up at him with large eyes.

"Then don't say anything and leave me to work," he groused. "And don't get your hopes up. Your young man still has a lot to account for."

He lowered himself with a sudden thunk into his chair and glowered at the many reports and such cluttering his desk. Then he stood again when Zelda rose from her seat. On impulse, she leaned over and shook his hand. He mumbled something about letting her know if anything more turned up.

"Oh, I hear you've got someone else helping you now," he said as she turned for the door. "I mean Telma and her group."

"What of it?" she asked, facing him again. She rather expected him to tell her what a fruitless search it was.

"I know of them, that's all. Sometimes they have helped us too. And I know Rusl. He's a good man."

"Oh, well, thank you, Detective," she said, and her expression seemed torn between the inkling of a smile and a puzzled frown.

After leaving the police station, she took a cab to Oracle Park, where she wandered along the paths while her mind was filled with Link. Her stomach was all twisted at the thought of him being accused of the thefts. She trembled and felt a chill that was not from the coolness of the day or the wind that swept snow into her face. She took the path that led to the clearing that held the Christmas tree, yet she almost forgot about her intention to check if the short in the tree's lights had been fixed. They had, but she thought they didn't seem as bright or as pretty as they had been before.

She glanced up at the darkening sky. _Oh Link! I don't believe for one moment that you are guilty, but Zauz is merely a little suspicious. Why is this happening? Where are you?!_

~O~

_Dec. ? …I don't know what day it is anymore. When I was searching for the bread crumbs in my pocket and found Aryll's note, I forgot for a while what I'd first been looking for. I found the bag of dried-out crusts later. I should have forgotten it. I should have washed its contents down the sink. I should never have eaten them but I could not resist. It was the first food I'd seen in days. I stuffed the crumbs and crusts into my mouth and washed them down with a lot of water. They were terribly hard and dry and it was like eating sand and little bricks, but I didn't care. I just wanted to eat._

_Just a little bit later, my stomach was roiling. I felt weaker than ever and could barely make it into the little bathroom to vomit everything I'd swallowed. I kept vomiting, even though nothing else would come. I couldn't even keep the water down. I put water in one of the bottles that I hadn't broken and had it beside my bed. I barely had the strength to pull the blankets back over me. I slept fitfully, with horrible repeated nightmares and I'd wake up trying to vomit again. I don't know how long I remained that way, but eventually the nausea faded and I was able to drink._

_I have a faint memory of one or more of the crooks coming in and placing my hand around something. I do not know what they were doing and I find that I hardly care anymore. I suppose I'm just going to die here, so what does it matter what happens to me? _

_I no longer feel so sick but I find it's far better to stay on my bed and not try to do anything except to go into the bathroom and get water. I've found myself wishing I'd died instead. At least then I wouldn't have to suffer and starve anymore. But it seems death doesn't want me yet, but it keeps tapping me on the shoulder and whispering that I might meet it sooner. I can't… I can't do it. I keep remembering Zelda's face… But I bet those gangsters would bulge about the eyes if I did it. I won't give them that much satisfaction. Zelda, you know I don't want to, don't you?_

~O~

It was Aryll who had the idea. Chiding herself because she'd forgotten it, she told Zelda that she and Link had some things stored in the basement of their apartment building, though most of it was hers. Not just anyone could get to the items, however, as they had to ask the superintendent to unlock the basement door and help them get to the right trunk and boxes. It was likely that no one outside of the building would even know about it.

Zelda bit at her lip, unsure that she wanted to see Link's things and be reminded all the more about him. On the other hand, she wanted to know for sure that his things were still there, that he hadn't taken them, and thus her curiosity won over her doubts and fears. She agreed to accompany her golden-haired friend and they made all haste to the converted graystone.

The superintendent grumbled under his breath after Aryll made her request and while he unlocked the basement door and shoved other things out of the way. His face red from the exertion, he pointed out the siblings' items, told the girls to fetch him when they were finished, and stomped up the creaky old stairs again, leaving them to themselves in the large chilly place.

As the younger of the two had mentioned before, at least three fourths of the stored items were hers. There were some extra clothes, schoolbooks she'd finished with, other books, some of which she kept for sentimental reasons, and knickknacks and other little things that she'd brought with her to the city but did not have enough room to spread them all around her apartment. Link's things mainly consisted of various sporting equipment, such as tennis rackets, a baseball, bat and catcher's mitt, a few different balls of varying degrees of disrepair, and even a pair of second-hand boxing gloves. He had a few books stored away as well, but they were of little consequence.

Disappointed, though they hardly knew what they'd been expecting to find, the two girls sighed and trudged up the stairs. It was just another dead end, and Zelda half wondered why they kept trying so hard. Just because Link's things were still in the basement didn't prove that he had been the one in his apartment. Perhaps he didn't care for the stored items and therefore didn't bother to collect them… or perhaps someone else had used his keys and went through his room, but didn't know of the stuff in the basement. The uncertainty was eating away at her nerves and her hope, as if a rubber band was slowly tightening around her.

In looking for the superintendent, they found him standing near the vestibule, frowning and arguing with a messenger boy in his teens. The latter was dressed in the usual trousers, shirt, and jacket, but he had a spiffy red cap with a wing insignia emblazoned in white on the front. An identical symbol was on the left side of his maroon coat.

"I told ya, he ain't here," Tarin was saying.

"That's what you always tell me," the teen groused in return. "What happened to the guy? Did the ground swallow him or something? How am I supposed to deliver this?!"

"I dunno. Ain't been here in over a week, and his rent's due soon," replied the super. Then he noticed the young ladies approaching and he turned partially to face them. "Talk to them. They can tell you more than I can."

With that, he shuffled past them and headed back through the corridor, fishing for the keys in his pocket. Zelda and Aryll, meanwhile, neared the delivery boy with their hearts jumping away in their throats. He looked to them with an expression of mixed annoyance and harried concern.

"Do you know this Link fellow?" he asked.

Aryll gasped, her hand flying to her mouth. Zelda bit at her lip and felt her eyes go moist. "Yes, we do," the elder of the two replied after a moment.

"I…am his sister," the other young lady added.

The messenger's own expression eased up slightly, as if someone had just given him a reprieve. "Then maybe you want to take this?" he asked hopefully.

He extracted a medium-sized envelope from the bag slung over his shoulder, the latter of which held all manner of small parcels and such. Aryll reached for the thick, yellowy envelope anxiously, but he held it back.

"You gotta sign for it," he told her. "It's the rules, you know. My boss would can me if I let anyone have a package without signing for it first."

He also pulled a maroon book, bearing the same winged insignia, from his pocket, flipped to the current page and gestured where the girl should apply the pen. She scrawled out her signature, her hand shaking as she did so, and handed both book and pen back to him. Then he released the envelope to her, smiled and tucked the book back into his pocket.

"Hey, thanks. I've been coming here for days and every time they told me he wasn't around. I couldn't just slip it under the door, either. Well, I've gotta go make the rest of my deliveries. Hey, if ever you need speedy fast messenger service, just call on us, the Winged Couriers!" Then he tipped his cap to them and left.

"Open it, Aryll!" Zelda half begged, half demanded as she leaned over her friend's shoulder.

"I'm trying, I'm trying," replied she.

She fumbled with it, her fingers stiff and cold after being down in the basement. Zelda reached over and tried to give her hand, but her gloved hands were no warmer. They both held their breaths, fearing what might be in the package. Though they did not speak it, they were both remembering what Zauz had said about a possible kidnapping. It didn't make sense, however, due to the time elapsed since his disappearance and with the envelope being addressed to Link. Then, finally, Aryll got the flap open and she carefully slid out the contents.

"Ohh…" she breathed.

There had been just two items in the envelope: a letter with a business-like heading and a much thicker sheet of photographic paper. Hardly paying attention to the contents of the former, which was addressed to her brother, she slipped it beneath the latter, of which she had already glimpsed the periphery. The thicker piece was indeed a photo. In the usual black and white, it looked to be a picture taken by a sidewalk photographer as he had captured three subjects.

"I think I need to sit down," murmured Aryll as the hand that still held the photo shook.

She moved to the stairs and sank onto the first step. Zelda sat next to her, put an arm around her and peered closer at the picture. There was an old woman with obviously gray hair, a round face with wrinkles that were both from smiling and from worrying. She wore a style of clothing that were perhaps a couple decades old and a simple little black hat. She was smiling gently as she looked past the camera to the man holding it.

At her sides were two children; the first was a little girl with blonde pigtails and the easy smile of innocent youth. She was holding fast to the elder lady's wrinkled hand and beaming prettily and directly at the camera. The other child was a boy who looked to be about four years her senior, with slightly darker hair and a similar face. He was carrying a paper bag and a small parcel, obviously the result of a small shopping excursion. His expression was more serious than the other two, but there was a slight upward quirk of his lips and a bit of a gleam in his eye. He wasn't quite looking at the camera at the moment the picture was snapped, as if something they'd just passed had caught his eye.

"It's… it's you and Link, isn't it?" Zelda queried just above a whisper, her mouth hanging open.

Aryll nodded as two large drops slipped down the sides of her nose. She held the photograph carefully, even tenderly, and she caressed the likeness of her grandmother with one trembling finger. Although she wanted to hold it and look at it forever, she gave it to her friend so that she would not spoil it with her tears.

"…And our grandma," she said, gasping a little. She pointed to her childish self. "I…I remember that dress. She made it out of scraps from her sewing projects and she m-made it…just for me. She told me it was a special dress f-for a special girl… I was so proud of it!"

Zelda's own eyes prickled with salty tears as she pulled her companion closer with one arm. Aryll leaned into her and wept softly. The elder girl couldn't tear her eyes from the photograph, taking in all the details of that little snapshot of the siblings' past. She noticed how little Aryll held her grandmother's hand and stayed so close to her side, and how Link, the little independent fellow that he probably was, had been trying to march ahead of the two females despite the burdens he carried. She saw how the old lady had one hand reaching out just slightly for the boy, as if she was about to tell him to walk a little slower for her sake. There were so many little things she could glean from that one, wonderful, heartrending picture… She thanked the heavens that she and her friend had been there to intercept the messenger.

They remained like that until they felt a nudge behind them and heard a voice just above them. "Hey! Move it, will ya? You're blocking the way, y'know!"

"Oh, I'm sorry!" Zelda exclaimed.

She shook her friend's arm and then jumped up from her position. Aryll joined her a second later and they both watched as a young man rushed past them and out the vestibule door. The elder girl then noticed the letter that had come with the picture had fallen to the floor. She crouched, picked it up and perused it quickly. It was from the Reely Gone Photo Studio in Latoan, which was, as Link had told her, the little town where they'd lived with their grandma. It merely mentioned that they'd found the picture he'd wanted and had included a print of it according to the money he'd sent in. She then handed the letter to Aryll.

"Do you suppose…" Zelda mused slowly. "I was just thinking… perhaps he wanted it for a Christmas present. I wonder how long he have to search before he found it?"

The blonde girl wiped her eyes and glanced at her friend. "I told him…a while ago…that I couldn't remember what she looked like. I was only six when she died, you know. He…he must have been looking for it…for me."

Glancing fondly at the picture again, the elder young lady murmured, "And he found a real treasure too."

Again she stared at it, taking in its details like it was water and she was dreadfully thirsty. With his face slightly averted, she thought of his current dislike of being photographed and considered that he mightn't have changed much in those dozen or so years. His hair seemed fairly well contained under the patched newsboy cap that he wore and she wondered if his grandmother had any resistance in having him keep it tamed and cut. Sometimes she was inclined to think that he didn't like barbers, or perhaps it was just a holdover from the days when he could hardly afford a haircut.

With a little sigh, she slipped the picture carefully back into the envelope and was on the verge of suggesting that they return home. She'd only opened her mouth when Aryll suddenly turned away and mounted the stairs with faltering steps that nearly tripped her. Zelda called out to her, but the blonde girl did not respond. With the envelope still in hand, Zelda followed her friend and found her in the kitchen of her little apartment. She was standing in front of the stove, with one hand on its edge while she looked through her tears toward the little table. In her other hand she still held her keys.

"Aryll…" the other young lady began.

"I…know. You want me to come…home with you," she hiccupped. "But it isn't my home! _This _is supposed to be my home and I want to be here, cooking for Link and keeping house. I want to hear him complain about the price of bacon. I wouldn't mind anymore when he gives me a hard time when the food doesn't quite turn out right." She gasped a little and glanced around. "But it's all empty…and I feel empty too! It's not supposed to be like this!"

Zelda wrapped her arm around her friend, embracing her from behind. What could she say but that she understood and shared Aryll's woeful sentiment. She looked around the kitchen, noting that it did not look lived in, and as such it seemed rather empty. Dust was gathering on the countertops, nothing was out of place, and if she opened the refrigerator she would not find anything edible, since Aryll had removed it earlier so it would not go bad.

The blonde young lady moved and ran her gloved hand along the handle of the fridge. "He would have been satisfied with an old icebox, but I wanted a refrigerator… a model like this. He grumbled and complained about it being expensive, but he bought it anyway. We pooled our resources to get it…and now we're not even using it…"

Zelda wasn't sure whether to roll her eyes or give a little sob. Aryll's description of her brother's action sounded perfectly accurate. Wasn't it just like a man to be overly conscious and even miserly when it came to spending money? She couldn't blame him too much, though, when she considered how much he'd had to scrimp on everything before.

"I'm so afraid, Zelda! What if he never comes back? I couldn't stand it if he…"

The elder girl's own heart gave an aching leap within her. "I know. I've… thought that too. No matter how much I detest them, they won't go away."

"…I thought he was dead."

Zelda choked, her grip around her friend automatically loosening.

Aryll turned partly toward her. "I don't mean now. I can't even think of it now, it's too horrible!" She inhaled a deep, shaky breath. "A few years ago, I was remembering little things from before Grandma died. I always knew I had a big brother but I started remembered more about him and was anxious to find him. My parents were very supportive and helped me search. We found the orphanage where he'd been placed…b-but he hadn't been there for years and they couldn't tell us where he was. You see, they'd had a fire that destroyed many of their records, his included. A man at the orphanage told us that he'd heard that Link…had died in an accident or something, but the man didn't know anything else. We…tried to find out more—oh, how we tried to find any trace of him!—but all we ran into were dead ends."

"That must have been awful," the elder of the two murmured.

Aryll nodded, more dewy tears shimmering in her lashes. "You can imagine how surprised I was when the detectives you and your family hired came to me. They said he was alive and I couldn't believe it at first. But you were very nice and kind to me on the phone and told me Link wanted to find me. I couldn't stay away after that! Next to being adopted by my parents, it was the best thing that's ever happened to me."

"He's the best thing that's happened to me too," Zelda said.

They wandered into the next room and looked around. Without his things cluttering up the converted sitting room, it looked like it belonged to a complete stranger. They both got a lump in the throat and neither wanted to voice the terrible thoughts that coursed through their minds. The apartment didn't hold anything for them without him, and so they left and locked the door behind them.

~O~

Link was lying on his mattress, debating sluggishly whether he should write in his journal again. He'd been thinking of it for at least an hour but hadn't yet moved to do it. What was the point, anyway? Nothing had happened since he'd last scrawled on its pages, and he'd already lost track of the days. He was too exhausted and dispirited even to read one of his books, or the peruse the newspaper for the tenth, (or was it the dozenth?) time. It was far easier just to lie under the cocoon of his blankets and try not to think too much.

He heard voices outside the door and then the scratching of the bolt being pulled back. He didn't move or lift his head as Daupple entered the room and sauntered toward him. The other man crouched before him with a self-satisfied grin on his face as he viewed the prisoner. He held something in his hand.

"So you're awake this time, hm? Get up."

Link didn't move. He only blinked slowly as he stared at Daupple's expensive shoes.

"I said, get up!" the crook said, reached over and yanking harshly at Link's collar.

"Go away. Leave me alone," the captive growled, shoving back weakly at the hand that hassled him.

Daupple shook him again, his own tone turning darker. "Get up and put your hand on these," he commanded. "Or do you want me to cut your fingers off and use them that way?"

The young man pushed himself up and glared at the gangster, who produced a pane of window glass and an empty milk bottle. He bade Link put his fingerprints all over the two items.

"Why?" he asked.

"Do it," Daupple snarled, and he flicked out his knife.

Link frowned, hesitated, and then complied with the demand, but he did it as haltingly as possible. Daupple urged him to hurry up but he pretended not to notice. As fatigued and weak as he was, he wanted to let the crook think he was even worse off. It seemed such a slim hope, but if he had even the slightest chance for escape, he would take it. As soon as he'd finished, Daupple picked the glass up by two of its edges and the milk bottle by wedging his fingers inside its neck, his own hands gloved.

"Now will you tell me what those are for?"

"Sure," the gangster replied, the nasty mirth spreading over his face again. "You don't know it, pal, but you've already joined us. You've helped us with several heists already."

Chortling, he slammed out of the room, while the prisoner's heart beat all the harder. What did the man mean? Link couldn't quite wrap his mind around it, but there was no doubt there was something sinister going on. He had that horrible sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach, as he had that day at school when one of the teachers took him aside and gently told him that his grandmother had suffered a heart attack. She had died almost instantly.

Link reached up and realized that his cheeks were moist. He scowled and made a swipe over his face with each hand. Why was it when he was warm, happy and with Zelda or his sister that his past seemed so far away, but now when he was cold, alone and afraid he would die that all his bad and dreadful memories crowded up on him? Trying to push them back, he snatched up the sheets of newspaper, yet he couldn't concentrate and the words kept blurring as his mind wandered. Then he threw the paper aside and grabbed for his journal.

First he wrote about Daupple's visit and the uneasiness he felt because he'd given into the demand. His brows creased, his mouth darkened at the corners as his frown deepened, and his eyes took on a scared, almost hunted look. He pressed so hard that the tip of his pencil broke off. Since the gangsters had also relieved him of his pocket knife, he was reduced to trying to whittle away at it with the sharpest piece of glass from all the bottles he'd smashed days ago. He gritted his teeth in frustration and nearby gave up, but by persevering he finally had the graphite exposed again. He continued writing, trying to remember not to etch all his anger and distress through multiple pages of the book.

_Whatever they're planning, I won't ever help them. Filthy, underhanded crooks! I hate their guts! I suppose I loathe them almost as much as…_him_. I won't even write his name. I can still remember how he would beat me, whether he was blind drunk or sober. He was beyond despicable, beyond cruel. He was a demon in Hylian flesh. _

_I'd been at a couple other foster homes, but I resented them and they didn't care about me, only about the money they received for looking after me. I always ended up running off and trying to find where Aryll had been placed. Then they'd bring me back to the orphanage, although it wasn't much better there either. The place was frigidly cold in winter, a blast furnace in the summer, and the other kids were a mixture of all kinds. Daupple was the worst of them all. He'd pull pranks, instigate fights, steal things and worse. Then he would blame me for it. Sometimes his slick words worked and I was punished instead. _

_I was fourteen when the headmaster summoned me one day and said that a couple had come in looking for a boy to adopt, I thought it was my chance to get out of there for once and for all. How wrong I was! The couple looked nice enough; he said he was in the insurance business and made a nice bundle, and she was a housewife. They were decent at first, except the man had a tendency to holler when he was cross. He often had me deliver packages to different addresses in town. His wife was a quiet woman who sometimes looked at me like a mouse that was hanging from the jaws of a feline, as if to warn me away. I didn't know why she looked so sad, so scared. I wonder if she might have cared for me, just a little? _

_Someone from the orphanage came around a few times to see how I was doing and went away, satisfied that I was in a good home. Then the visits stopped and he got rougher and rougher. I already knew his habit was to get blindingly drunk on weekends and sometimes during the week too. He would pull his wife around and demand that she kiss him, or take a drink with him, or something more. Sometimes he yelled at me when he saw me staring at him, but he never came after me then. But after the woman from the orphanage quit coming, everything changed._

_I stumbled onto his secret one day. He was in the insurance business all right, but he made most of his money by forging policies, and pocketing portions of the money that he was supposed to send to the companies he represented so shoddily. He caught me as I peeked into the door of the garage and he slapped me three times, so hard that I saw stars. He said if I ever told anyone, he'd kill me. He got nastier by the day, and it was always worse when he was drinking. Then if he saw me even looking at him, he would charge after me and smack me. _

_I grew to hate the sight of him and I wanted nothing better than to leave. But the first time I tried he intercepted me as I crawled out of the basement window, and then he hit me until I was all but senseless. He told me he would do it again if I tried to run away; it didn't stop me from trying again and again to escape from his bruising clutches. He wouldn't allow me to leave the house, and gone were the little "errands" he'd had me run. Was that why they brought me into their home? Was it just so he could use me as an innocent messenger boy, to front for him in his illegal dealings? _

_I learned that he beat his wife too and that was the reason she was so quiet and afraid. If she dared lift her voice to beg him to leave me be, he would instead whirl on her and start smacking her around. She begged me not to do anything that would anger him. "It's better for you to just do as you're told," she whispered when he was out of hearing and sight. _

_Whenever he'd leave the house, he'd lock it tight so we couldn't get out. Sometimes he was so drunk that he wouldn't let her go out to buy groceries. We went hungry on those days but he didn't care because he had his bottle to keep him company. He trusted her so little that sometimes he went with her to the store, but she was so afraid of him I don't think she ever said anything. I tried to pick one of the locks while they were gone once, but he found the scratches and beat me again. After that, he would shove me in the basement and lock the door whenever he was leaving the house. He'd already nailed the basement windows shut. I broke the glass, but I couldn't bend the casing in the center enough to squeeze out. When he saw what I'd done, he hit me over and over again._

_I hated him so. Every moment of every day was a nightmare, fearing what he'd find to beat me for the next time. I…might have even wanted to kill him, but all I really wanted was escape. He was perhaps an inch taller than me, but I was skinny he was much bigger and broader. I didn't have a chance against him, but whenever I did try to fight back, he'd strike me all the more. Sometimes, when he so blindly drunk that he couldn't even see straight, he'd hit me and scream his own name in my face, as if he didn't know who I was. _

The pages were getting increasingly wrinkled as he progressed. He clenched his fingers tightly and practically clawed at the paper. He was biting at his bottom lip so hard that blood came, but he neither noticed nor would he have cared. The vibration of his heartbeat resounded in his ears and his whole body trembled. But he didn't stop. It was as if he hoped that by writing them down he could rid himself of the harrowing memories.

_Grandma would often tell Aryll and me that we were beloved children of the goddesses. She said she wanted us to understand that though bad things might happen to us, it would all work out for our good in the end. I didn't understand it then, and I doubt I do now. When I was in the house of that man, when he beat me and locked me in the basement, I didn't know why it was happening to me. I still don't know what possible good could have come of it. At least Aryll was spared such an ordeal…_

_One night, he was crocked as usual. I wanted nothing more than to flee, but the doors were locked, the windows bolted, and he kept the keys in his pocket. He had merely to glimpse me and he exploded into a drunken rage, slapping me around. When I tried to clobber him with a heavy skillet, he shoved me down into the basement, slamming and bolting the door. It's…it's like I'm reliving it all over again…and it's horrible…_

His writing trailed off as his hand shook. He gritted his teeth and gripped the pencil all the harder, though he was half inclined to hurl it across the room instead.

_He didn't know that I'd hidden a hammer and a sturdy pair of pliers down there and I'd slowly been working on pulling the dozens of nails out of the window frame. It was dark by that time, and I lit one of the many candles they kept stored in the basement. With frequent, nervous glances toward the door, I continued struggling with the nails. I heard some sharp slaps, her cries and his hoarse, slurred shouts. For a time everything seemed quiet, though I would occasionally hear footsteps going from one part of the house to another and sometimes some other sounds. I heard a heavy thump and that made me stop and listen harder, but there was nothing else. I worked frantically, holding my breath and stopping when steps came into the kitchen. If the door opened I would have to move fast…but it never did._

_Finally I got the last nail out. My heart was clogging my throat as I noiselessly set down the tools and cautiously stacked up a few of the crates that were stored down there. If I caused anything to crash, he'd probably hear it, come to investigate, and find what I'd done. I took such painstaking care to avoid anything more than the tiniest noise. I kept telling myself that I was nearly free, but I was so afraid that I would be discovered before I could make it outside. I sucked in a breath and squeezed through the window. I was out! I was free of his awful wrath! But then I realized I wasn't safe yet and I still had to make my escape good. _

_I crept around the side of the house, crawling beneath any windows with light shining behind them. My heart all but stopped when I heard a knock at the side door. I darted behind a tree and peeked out. Under the little porch light, I could see a man standing there with a bundle over his shoulder. His clothes were rather ragged and rumpled looking, and I knew him to be a tramp. The railroad went through our town and sometimes the bindlestiffs who rode the cars came around looking for a handout, or to trade labor for food. The drunken man who would never be my father usually chased them off. _

_Seeing the tramp had given me an idea. I ran further from the house and into the nearby woods. Without once looking back, I made my way for the railroad tracks. I'd caught a ride on a train once before when I was leaving another place I didn't much like, so I figured I could just do it again. My only thought was to put as much distance between me and that drunken man as possible. I found a boxcar filled with large crates that smelled strongly and I hid in a corner. I rode all night and the next day, until evening when a railroad dick spotted me and I had to run for it. _

_I didn't know where I'd ended up. I was ravenously hungry, I didn't have a rupee to my name, and only had the clothes on my back, but I was free of that man at last. Why did the goddesses let me escape that, only for me to end up here? Why is this happening to me? I'm never going to see her again…_

~O~

At the beginning of that week, Zelda's mother had attained the services of a replacement for Navi. Actually, the girl was nothing more than a babysitter who had agreed to the job after Giselda offered to pay her two and a half times her usual rate. So, for those several days before Christmas, Zelda had been freed of the responsibility of looking after her brothers. Without her work at the clinic and with the group looking into her dear friend's disappearance, she suddenly found herself without anything productive to do. Sometimes she wandered the streets, or the park, often fretting and thinking of Link. She didn't know what to do.

Late one afternoon, after their temporary babysitter had gone home, the boys peeked into Zelda's room. Only upon seeing that she didn't appear to be crying, but was only holding the stuffed red loftwing, did they dare enter. She glanced up at them, her eyes full of sadness and the smile she tried to put on for them didn't seem quite genuine.

"How was your day with Honey?" she inquired. "I hope you didn't tell her she had a huge pimple on her face this time."

They tried not to look too guilty. "There's might have been one coming on, only we couldn't see it yet," Joel protested craftily, a naughty smile on his face.

"It isn't a nice thing to tell a girl, especially if it isn't true," said she. "Don't you like her?"

Zill made a face. "She's always calling her boyfriend and talking all gushy to him."

"Yeah!" agreed the other brother. He raised his voice in pitch in imitation of the girl who'd been looking after them. "'Darling, you're a dreamboat!' 'Darling, I can't wait to see you tonight.' Darling this! Darling that! What kind of sissy name is that anyway?!"

Both of them made faces and motions like they were throwing up. Their sister's face lost some small quantity of its sadness. She was about to tell them that they would think differently about it one day, but at a single sound all her previous thoughts disappeared like fog before the rising sun. The telephone rang.

She reached for it, but Joel snatched up the receiver first. "Hello! Is this the power company? Why are the lights off?"

Zelda's brows lowered. "Hand it over!" she commanded in a loud whisper as she extended her hand.

He did as she bade him, his expression half guilty, half gleeful. Both he and his brother perched themselves on the side of her bed, with impish grins as they watched her talk on the telephone.

"Hello?"

"Miss Harkinian? This is Auru."

Her hand curled tighter around the receiver. "Oh, yes… I uh, I'm sorry about my brother."

"Don't mention it," he replied evenly, almost with a smile in his voice. Then his tone grew more serious as he continued, "We have found something about your missing friend, but it would be better to tell you in person. Can you come on down to Telma's?"

She inhaled sharply, her heartbeat quickening. "Certainly. I…I can come right away."

"Good. I shall see you soon then."

She said something else that she wasn't didn't quite remember later on, bid him a quick farewell, and then hung up. She rushed to her closet and pulled out one of her coats and hats. She fumbled for her gloves and her purse. Her brothers trailed after her with pouting expressions that grew hopeful.

"Are you going somewhere?" questioned Zill, as if her imminent departure wasn't perfectly obvious already.

"Where are you going?"

"Can we come too?"

Their sister glanced at them just briefly as she had one arm in her coat and was reaching for the other one. "No, boys. I'm sorry, but you cannot come. It's not the sort of place little boys should go."

They stuck out their lower lips again, but it wasn't just because she had refused them. "We're not so little!" Joel countered. He glanced at his brother. "I'm not, at least."

"I'm not either!"

"You're littler than me."

"Am not! You're hardly any taller than me!"

"You are so! You're skinnier. Mother says so!"

"I am not!" Zill retorted. His face was growing quite red as he glared back at his brother and clenched his fists.

"Enough!" Zelda cried. She reached up and hurriedly pinned on her hat. "If you will stop that at once, I'll take you somewhere another day. We'll… go skating or something."

"Really?" the boys said, their eyes fixed on her.

"Yes, really. But no fighting now. I have to go."

She hastened downstairs and in short order she had Ferrus get the car out and they were on their way downtown again. All the time, her mind was whirling with all the possibilities. Had they found Link?! Or perhaps it was something much less exciting than that. Had they found a clue? Surely they hadn't found his body… What a horrible thought that was! She refused to dwell on it. She clenched her pocketbook and wished she'd asked Auru for a little hint of what they'd found.

It occurred to her all of a sudden that Aryll should just about be finished at the library. Selfishly, she just wanted to hurry to Telma's so that she could hear the news all the sooner, but she knew the younger girl had as much right to it as she did. She pursed her lips, sighed and then asked the chauffeur to make a detour. She went into the building and told Aryll of the development, but she still had to wait for a some several minutes that dragged their feet interminably. The blonde young lady, her face a bit pale and her eyes wide with unshed tears, joined her in the vehicle. Then they were off again.

When they arrived at the bar, Zelda didn't wait for Ferrus to step out and open the door for them. She was out on the sidewalk before he'd shut off the engine, and Aryll was at her heels. In her haste, Zelda nearly slipped in the slick, slushy snow, but Aryll reached out for her and they both managed to stay upright . Inside, where the warmness seemed to envelop them almost oppressively, they immediately marched toward the bar and met Telma's eye. The proprietress nodded and followed them into the back room. The other members of the group were already gathered there.

"What is it? What's happened? What did you find? Is it…?" Zelda queried all in a rush, but she paused when she saw that someone she did not recognize was also present.

The stranger was a man in a greenish coat with hat pulled rather low over his eyes. His eyebrows were sharply hooked at the end, and it seemed as though his mouth was twisted into an almost permanent, wily sort of smile. He had an empty glass before him and he looked up at the newcomers to the room as if expecting a refill. The men of the group stood, except for the stranger. Rusl and Auru, who were on his either side, hauled him to his feet. Auru snatched the cap off the other man's head and shoved it into his hands.

"Miss Harkinian, Miss Galen, this is Purlo. He drives a taxi," Rusl said. "He has something to tell you."

Purlo blanched and tried to back away as subtly as possible. "I j-just remembered! I left my heap double parked. I gotta go move it!"

Ashei neared the man and Rusl moved aside for her. She gave Purlo a none-too-gentle nudge. "Forget that! Go on. Tell them just what you told us."

He twisted his flat cap in his hands, grumbled under his breath and avoided looking at the two young women. These latter two were all but trembling in awful anticipation of what they were about to hear. Telma suggested that they each take a seat and they did so hurriedly. Zelda perched herself on the edge of hers.

"What is it?" asked she, her blue eyes going first from one member of the group to another, to finally alight on the cab driver.

His face darkening, Auru took hold of the back of Purlo's collar.

"All right! All right! You don't have to bend my spine!" the shifty cabbie exclaimed as he shook free. His eyes on the table, he stammered, "I uh, had a fare a couple weeks back. They were two fellows, looked enough alike that they might've been brothers. One of them was that guy in the picture," he said, gesturing to the picture of Link which was sitting on the table.

Both girls inhaled sharply, and Zelda slid still further forward in her chair as she clutched at the edge of the table. "…Was it the night of the tenth? Where did you pick them up? Where did they go?"

Purlo scowled again. "You sure ask a lot of questions, sister."

Ashei smacked him. "That's no way to talk to a lady. Where're your manners?!"

The cabbie mumbled something like an apology, but he hardly looked penitent. Zelda's own brows lowered and she fixed her glare on him. She clenched her chin in her best attempt to keep from devolving into tears. Being angry at the man was the easiest thing in the world at that moment.

"Why didn't you tell this to the police?!" she demanded. "They asked you about this, didn't they? No one came forward!"

"I had my reasons," he returned, his tone petulant like a naughty child who was well and truly caught.

"Yeah, you had your reasons all right," Ashei burst in. "We all know that you have an interest in the nightly games down there on Swamp Street. And that if you have a likely sucker in your cab, you try to get him into a game. That's why you didn't mention your customers when the police asked, because you were afraid if you told the truth, the cops'd get wind of it and shut it down. And you didn't want the cab company to know about your little side business either. You had those two men as fares and you tried to talk them into joining one of those games, didn't you?" She prodded him. "Didn't you?!"

He flinched away from her. Had she been just a man and not any larger than him, he might have considered taking a poke at her. Even he wouldn't go so far as to strike her, and she could easily have flipped him over and planted her knee in his chest before he could barely touch her. She was almost scary when she was aroused, and he wasn't fool enough to tangle with her.

"Errr… yeah, guess I did," he muttered. "I picked them up that swanky neighborhood out there on the outskirts. I was just heading back after dropping someone off there. I thought those two'd be good marks…er, prospects. They were even going to the same area, just a few doors down the street. But the guy, not the one in picture but the other one, growled, 'Shaddup and keep your eyes on the road, ya twit!' He was the rougher sort you see a lot of around here. But the other guy didn't say anything, like he had other things on his mind."

Zelda took up the picture of Link from the tabletop and held it between her trembling fingers. The group had copied and cropped the original picture of the two siblings until only the young man's likeness remained. "You're sure it was this man?" she questioned, her voice a little more high-pitched than usual.

"Sure, he was the quiet one. I don't think I heard him spit out more than a couple words the whole time. I let them both out at the Woodfall Tavern, and I, err…" Purlo clamped his lips together, realizing he should have shut up already.

"Don't stop now," Auru said, placing a hand warningly on his shoulder.

"Please, what was it?" Aryll pleaded. "Did you see him again? Do you know what happened to him?"

The cabbie cleared his throat and glanced at the two group members on his either side. Shad was standing behind him as well. "Well, I went down the street to see how the game was going, you know. And when I came out later, I just might've seen something. I was just getting into my cab, minding my own business mind you, and I saw them come out of the bar."

Zelda's heart leaped up to her throat. "Both of them?"

"Sure, it was both of 'em. But the one guy wasn't doing too good. The other guy and the barkeep were carrying him between them. Looked like he'd gotten a real snootful."

Aryll too leaned forward. "Which one? Which man were they carrying?"

Zelda felt she already knew the answer. Her breath seemed to come shallowly and her heart gave a painful twist. It was obvious who had been carried out of the bar because he was still missing. He couldn't have been intoxicated because she knew he flatly refused to imbibe the slightest amount of alcohol. The other man, who the taxi driver had described as rough, must have taken Link somewhere… but where?! If the brusque fellow was a crook, which she surmised he was, why kidnap Link? There had been no ransom note. What had he done to her friend? What did he want of Link?

"It was dark. I didn't see their faces too good," Purlo replied sullenly. "I was parked just down the street and drove up quick, thinking they might want a cab. But they piled him into a dark sedan parked by the curb. It might have been the quiet guy who was drunk, but I'm not sure."

Zelda's heart took another dive to the rest of her insides and Aryll made a little choking sound that was part gasp, part sob. The elder girl found her blonde friend's hand and grasped it, needing the comfort as much as she wanted to give it. She stared at the picture of Link on the table, thinking how it didn't do him justice if only because his eyes were so blue. Tears welled behind her lashes, and she tried hard to keep from completely losing her composure. She glared at the shifty-eyed taxi driver.

"Why didn't you do anyth-thing?!" she cried out, and at the last word her voice caught on a sob.

Purlo held up his hands and scowled a bit. "How was I supposed to know something was wrong? The guy was drunk. It happens all the time, you know. What was I supposed to do? Call the cops because he gotten himself plastered and his friend was taking him home? Hah! What a laugh that woulda handed 'em!"

"He wasn't drunk!" Zelda insisted, her breath hitching as she tried to keep her tears back. "You…you still should have done something… You should have told the police!"

"Is that the lot?" Rusl questioned, his eyebrows lowered and his mouth a firm line as he beheld the cabbie. "You're not leaving out anything, are you? Because if you are, I still have friends on the force and they would be interested in those back-room games."

"That's all I know, I swear!" Purlo replied, holding up his hand as if in oath. "I've told you everything! Can I get out of here now?"

"Go on," said Telma, and she took hold of the man's arm as he was on his way out. "And if you want another drink, Purlo, you'll have to pay for it this time around."

With the cabbie's departure, the others drew closer around the table. Zelda's head and eyes flew up, staring at the members of the group. Her lips quivered, but her eyes were intense with turquoise fire.

"We have to find him!" she exclaimed softly. "Please, can't you do anything? I know Link wasn't drunk. He's never touched the stuff, so they must have done something to him!"

"We're still doing all we can to find your young man, so don't you worry little lady," Telma said soothingly, while placing a large, callused hand on her shoulder. "We'll find him for you."

"It's interesting that he mentioned the other man as looking like Wolfspaw," Rusl mused as he rubbed his stubbly chin. "I've been thinking that might be why I thought he looked familiar. I think I must have run into this other fellow somewhere, but I do not remember his name. This warrants some careful checking."

"There's another wrinkle to it," Shad said, his own red brows crinkled and his mouth a concerted frown. "We had a burglary at the store a couple weeks back, before Link disappeared. After that, Rupin ordered a change in the place where the money is kept overnight, as it cannot be taken to the bank until the next day. This was revealed to the department heads, including Link, just before his disappearance. After this latest theft, Rupin has been pulling his hair out and screaming for the police to catch the burglars. He holds that Link is in league with the burglars and has been screaming to have him captured as well."

"Rupin is nothing but an old skinflint!" Zelda declared bitterly, voicing the same thing the young man had often grumbled. "I know he tried to deprive Link of a fair salary last year and he's probably all put out because he's missing. Of course he would suspect Link! He's wrong! Link despises the man, but he would never steal from him!"

Shad gave a single nod. "I must agree with your assertion. Though he may grouse and complain and often has had a bad temper, Link has always been a hard worker. That's how he was able to get his promotion. I cannot believe so easily that such a man would suddenly turn and throw away everything he's built up for himself."

"I've heard about the various thefts," said Rusl. "It seems there's a group of skilled thieves at work, as so far they have managed to evade capture by the police. They have made clean getaways and leave behind just enough evidence to point to Wolfspaw. I am told this must be a fairly new gang to the city, as their methods do not match up with the known criminals around here."

"We should ask around more, then," declared Ashei. "One of those stoolies or winos is bound to know something. They're always hanging about, so I bet one of them at least knows about these burglaries, or about the rough individual who was with Wolfspaw."

Auru shook his head at the eagerness and rashness of youth. "On the other hand, we must be careful who we ask and what we ask. It will do us and the young man no good if the wrong ears hear it."

The dark-haired woman scoffed and opened her mouth to give a retort, but Telma gave them each a cautionary look. Aryll was weeping softly and Zelda was still trying to pull up her slipping composure. The latter still seethed at Rupin's audacity to suspect her missing friend, her mind too muddled with all the new information to think straight.

Telma turned to the girls. "You both look done in."

"Oh, uhm, I guess we should go home," muttered Zelda. "You will…keep trying, won't you?"

"Indeed we will. We'll find your young man, hon. Don't lose all hope yet," the large redhead replied in a gentle, almost motherly tone. "And we'll call you the moment we have something new."

"Thank you," said both girls.

They quit the room and departed from the bar, once more relinquishing themselves to the backseat of the family car. Ferrus attempted to pump them for news, but all his attempts fell flat when meeting up with their grief and despair. The rest of the evening seemed to stretch out before them like a path covered with the most wicked of brambles. Christmas was just a couple days away. It was supposed to be a merry holiday, with warmth, lights, good cheer, the closeness of family and friends. Most of the ingredients were still there, but no matter how hard they tried to pull themselves from their sadness, without Link it all seemed so bleak and colorless by comparison.

* * *

_If you've been paying attention, you might recall that I alluded to the picture of Link and Aryll's grandma a little earlier in the story. I knew for a while that I wanted to include this detail. And yeah, I also had more of Link's backstory in mind since I was just starting to plot out this story, both the part with Sahasrahla and the horrible man who shall not be named (at least for now). With everything that I set up in the prequel, Link definitely has potential for more backstory than Zelda does, for instance. _

* * *

01-09-2020 ~ Published (10,126 words)


	12. Before the Dawn

**Keeping Hope for Christmas - by Pseudo Twili**

Chapter 12: Before the Dawn

The book on botany that Zelda had given him for Christmas the year before hung limply in Link's hands, for he had quit trying to read it some time ago. His mind was wandering far away, thinking of happier, warmer times he'd spent mostly with Zelda and sometimes with his sister. They'd gone to the beach and laughingly picked seaweed from between their toes. They had been to Oracle Park many times, both when its trees blossomed in all their soft pink and glorious white splendor and when they were arrayed in a veil of fresh new leaves. They'd enjoyed several rides out to the countryside, either for a picnic, a bit of fishing, or just because they felt like taking a long walk where they could hardly see the city at all. He supposed those distant memories were all he had to look forward to now.

He noticed in one side of his vision the door was slowly opening. In that first moment he hardly paid attention to it and half thought that it was his mind playing tricks on him. Then a man stepped out from behind the door and Link stared at him almost stupidly, for he wasn't sure if he'd seen him with the other crooks or not. The newcomer held a small, rectangular object in his hand and he kept moving it back and forth between his palms. He was rather tall and thin and he looked at Link jerkily, almost as if he was sizing him up.

"Do you play gin rummy?" the man questioned, his expression hopeful as to the answer.

The prisoner's eyebrows crinkled. "Who are you?"

His lips curving downward, the man stared at Link as if he was completely off his nut. "You don't know who I am? I'm one of the best safecrackers in the business! I am Zaht!"

"Then go away… Go crack a safe or something," the young man muttered, turning his head away.

"You don't tell me what to do!" the self-proclaimed crook snapped, and he actually stamped his foot. "I could kill you here and now if I wanted to! I am second to none but Mr. Dorffman, so I can do whatever I like." He puffed out his thin chest as he boasted. "Now you better answer me! Do you play gin?!"

"I don't want to. Leave me alone."

Zaht strode forward and tried to pull Link up by his lapels; the crook had thought it would be easy after he'd seen others do it, but his own muscles were underdeveloped enough that he could not easily hoist even a starving young man. Zaht grew considerably redder in the face and pulled out his snub-nosed revolver.

"I will kill you!" he threatened, holding the gun inches from Link's face.

"Go ahead," the prisoner replied. His blue eyes were dull as he glared back up at one of his crooked captors. He didn't believe that the man would pull the trigger, despite his threat. Link didn't allow himself to think any further than that; in that moment he did not consider whether he really wanted to die or not.

Zaht's finger squeezed a little tighter around the trigger, but not nearly enough. Then he seemed to deflate and he slowly put the revolver into his pocket again. He scowled and tried to assume a proud expression again.

"You play gin with me and if you win, I'll bring you whatever you want. We gotta have stakes, so we'll set one rupee for ten points. Whaddya say? Is it a deal?!"

_Anything he wanted!_ Link was suddenly picturing a thick sandwich filled with everything he liked, or a juicy steak cooked until it was just barely medium rare. He faced the crook again and tried to respond as nonchalantly as ever.

"All right, it's a deal."

Zaht chuckled and rubbed his hands together. He disappeared back into the next room for several seconds, returning with a folding table which he ordered Link to set up. Then the crook dragged in two chairs; he took the one near the door and made his opponent sit in the one opposite.

"No tricks now or I really will have to shoot you," he said, and pulled out his piece once more to remind the captive of its deciding vote in Zaht's favor.

There was a gleam in his eye as he speedily shuffled the cards and dealt out ten each. He watched Link carefully, but the young man had nothing but a tired, gaunt expression and kept his eyes lowered. Zaht started out in a fine mood, which swiftly turned sour when he couldn't win a single hand. Even when he had good cards and was about to gin, Link always managed to one-up him and score all the points himself. Before long he was shuffling the cards extra thoroughly and snapping them down with each discard. They more they played, the more he lost and the more flustered he became.

Link almost smiled to himself. Perhaps it wasn't fair to keep back the information that he'd been playing gin rummy for years and always managed to have incredible luck with it. He'd played it with the other boys at the orphanage, and with co-workers at the department store. He'd practically gotten it down to an art where he could go just enough turns to either knock or gin and thereby add to his score rather than his opponent's. He had hardly ever lost a hand in all that time; against Zaht he won every one, and it was mostly by going gin.

The crook swore. "You're a cheat! I saw you take two cards!"

With a small frown, Link held up his cards, the backs of which faced the other man. He fanned them out slowly. "I only have eleven," he said, and then placed one of them on the discard pile.

Zaht growled under his breath. He narrowed his eyes at Link's throwaway card; most of them were always useless to the crook, and yet the young man often picked up Zaht's discards. It was infuriating! He didn't even let Link shuffle anymore, so paranoid was he that he was being duped.

They played well beyond the standard limit of one hundred points, starting a second and then a third game, as the self-proclaimed safe cracker was so doggedly determined to win. His face grew red, and then an unbecoming shade of purple. He slammed the table with the flat of his hand and didn't even care that it smarted. Several times he made Link stand up and back away, just so he could examine the chair, floor and underside of the table and make sure the young man hadn't hidden any cards. He searched the prisoner, but there was nothing in his pockets but lint and crumbs, and he had no cards hidden up his sleeve or anywhere else on his person.

Link drew a card from the deck and fit it in with the rest in his hand without letting a smile tease at his lips. "Gin," he announced, and this time placed all eleven of his cards on the table.

Zaht's eyes bulged, a vein in his forehead pulsed, he bit at his cheek and made a sound, something like "Mmmbluurrgg!" Then he cursed Link and again accused him of cheating.

The young man held up his hands. "You searched me. You've been watching me like a hawk. You've counted the cards. You haven't even let me touch the rest of the deck. How could I possibly be cheating?" said he, his tone edged with sarcasm as he raised one brow.

The crook, who had lost all semblance of composure, had lost more than fifty rupees to him by that time, and Link was very near blitzing him for the third time. It was easier than ever for Link to read his opponent and make his own win all the more certain. He schooled his own expression carefully, no matter what came into his hand. However, his mind kept drifting to the sandwich he hoped he could still wangle from the man; he even found himself drooling a bit and he hastily wiped at the corner of his mouth.

Desperate for a win, Zaht drew a card and then declared, "Knock!" He all but threw his hand to the table and added, "See how you like this!"

He had two unmatched cards, both aces, which amounted to two points. Then Link set down his hand and of his unmatched cards, he put his lonely ace with a run Zaht had created. Then he was left with naught but a deuce. The count was even, and because it was Zaht who had knocked, it was Link's score once again. The crook yelled, pounded the table and stamped his foot.

"You! Curse you! How are you doing that?!" he screeched, and reached for the cards again.

The door to the room opened suddenly and there stood a silvery-haired, youthful-faced man who glared at the back of Zaht's head. "What are you doing in here?" the former demanded, and by his voice Link knew him to be the crook named Vlaatin.

"I'm playing gin!" Zaht snapped, his very tone stretched thin and taut like a bass string.

The newcomer marched toward the table and placed one hand on top of the cards. He had his other hand thrust into his pocket and eyed the prisoner as if daring him to make a move.

"You're supposed to be keeping watch," said Vlaatin, without looking at the other crook.

"Yeah, so?! Nothing's happenin'. Get your mitt off!"

In one swift motion, Vlaatin swiped the cards to the floor. "You let the boss see you leaving the door unlocked and playing with this guy and he'll really tear into you! And I'd enjoy watching him too. Now get back out there!"

Zaht swore and pushed back his chair so quickly, so forcefully that it clattered to the floor. He glared at Vlaatin for the space of a few seconds, but then he backed away and stamped from the room. The other crook immediately fixed the prisoner in his cold sights again. Link moved back in his chair.

"Don't try anything," Vlaatin warned him, and pulled out his sleek, finely polished automatic. "You wouldn't stand a chance, not in your weakened state. And in case you haven't figured it out yet, we have you beautifully framed. Your reputation will be thoroughly ruined by the time we're through. You'll have to join us, unless you want to rot in jail."

Link clenched his teeth. "You can go… take a flying leap. And I hope you break your neck!"

The smooth gangster made a tsking sound. "I see we haven't worn you down enough, hm? We'll take care of that." He chuckled, viewed the captive with the predatory eyes of a bloodthirsty monster, and then turned and quit the room.

When the door resounded with a bang and the bolt clicked into place, Link suddenly slumped in his chair. He'd gotten himself so worked up in thinking about the prospect of food and in besting Zaht at the game. The elation faded like morning dew under the bristling summer sun, and he hadn't the slightest spark of energy left. Already his head felt light, and the whole world seemed to spin as he rose unsteadily from his chair. He barely made it to his mattress, where he promptly collapsed, his breaths coming in ragged spurts.

He moaned, but it was nearly soundless. He closed his eyes, as if they were too heavy to keep open anymore, and wished to be free of suffering, of ordeals, of trouble and worries. He wished the gangsters had ended his life. He should have needled Zaht to the point where the obviously high-strung man might have drawn his weapon and carried out his threat. He could have made a bolt for the door, or tried to jump the crook; either he would have gained his freedom, which seemed more unlikely, or potentially have been killed in the attempt, unless the gangster's aim was bad and only wounded him. But all those thoughts were in vain, as he was left all alone again. He never did get that sandwich.

~O~

Zelda had been fretting, pacing and trying to figure out the information she'd picked up from the group; all the while she'd been hoping to hear the telephone ring and a voice on the other end telling her that they'd located Link. She tried to concentrate on wrapping some gifts for her family, but her thoughts would continually wander to her missing friend and the fact that she hadn't found anything to give him for Christmas. She'd tried to so hard to think of something, wishing to have it ready if—no, when!—he came back to them. She had wanted it to be something really special, but his disappearance had stymied her efforts to figure it out.

Joel and Zill would not allow their sister to forget for one moment her promise to take them somewhere. All day they came to her to bug her about it whenever they could slip away from their babysitter. Sometimes they came up with the most ridiculous excuses for coming to see her, such as checking to make sure her radiator was working, or that she hadn't cut herself with the scissors. They even told her they'd seen a man out on the street, whom they were sure was an arch-villain from their comic books…but then they revealed that they'd seen him two days before.

She turned to them and declared testily for what seemed like the ninety-ninth time, "We'll go out tomorrow! And don't you come here to ask me again," she warned her brothers as they grinned at each other. "Or I shan't take you at all."

For once they listened to her and did not approach her room for the rest of the evening.

The next day was Christmas Eve. Honey, having received her generous wage, was doing some last-minute shopping of her own and would not be over that day. Zelda sighed to herself several times, wishing she could come up with any kind of excuse to remain at home instead of taking her brothers out. And why in the world had she suggested skating? She'd been in such a hurry that she'd said the first thing that came to her mind without considering what else it might mean to her. The memory of skimming over the ice with her hand on Link's arm was something she recalled with considerable fondness mingled with a deep ache. She tried to suggest something else, but the boys had their hearts set on that particular activity and she couldn't bear to go back on her word.

"I'll go with you," Aryll said.

Zelda's gaze jumped up from tying the laces of her boots to her friend who stood before her. "I would welcome the company… Oh, but are you sure, Aryll?" Her eyebrows lowered and her mouth crinkled worriedly at the corners.

The lips of the other young lady were pressed in a resolute line that still quivered when she spoke. "Yes, I'm sure. I don't have to work at the library until Monday. I'll… help you look after the little rascals."

The elder of the two pressed her friend's hand quickly and then returned to her boots. With the roads clogged up with snow and officials advising people not to travel unless absolutely necessary, Aryll knew she wasn't going to be seeing her parents for Christmas. Zelda felt that it must be quite a disappointment for her, especially with her brother missing to top it off. She wished she could cheer Aryll up and help her feel some of the good spirits that seemed to abound in that merry season, but how could Zelda do that when she felt so sad herself?

When Zill and Joel were wrapped up in scarves and coats and hats so much that only a small part of their faces still showed, their sister herded them out the door, with Aryll following quietly and unobtrusively behind. Zelda stopped before stepping outside, bit at her lip and turned to Techer who was still standing faithfully by after helping with the bundling up process.

"You will be sure someone answers the phone when it rings, won't you?" she asked, her lips twisted in a worried frown.

"Certainly, Miss Zelda," he replied, a slight warmth coming through his tone for the girl he'd seen grow up before him.

"And if it's a call for me…" she said, and faltered. "…If it's about Link, you must send someone to find me right away. We'll be at Malo Plaza, you know."

He nodded. "At Malo Plaza. Yes, miss. I shall take care of it. I shall come myself if need be."

The lowering of her brows eased up and she almost smiled. "Thank you, Techer." Impulsively, she leaned upward on the tips of her toes and kissed him on the cheek. "You're such an old dear!"

His composure slipped just a bit. She used to do that a lot when she was little, as well as fondle his fine mustache and tell him he was the nicest butler they ever had. That was usually when she wanted him to read to her or something else, but he loved her affection and always held her in a soft spot in his heart. His cheeks showed just the faintest hint of a blush, and he cleared his throat. Then he bid her goodbye and again held the door open for her.

Ferrus was busy that day driving Gustaf, thus the young ladies and two brothers all climbed into an Epona cab. As impatient as the boys were to go right to the Plaza, their sister informed them that they first had to make a stop at Aryll's apartment so she could pick up her skates. Zelda wanted to accompany her friend inside, but she also knew she couldn't leave the cabbie at the mercy of her brothers. She bade them strictly to behave themselves and then allowed them to climb out of the taxi.

As if they hadn't heard her, Joel touched his brother's arm, cried, "Race you!" and then bounded up the stairs with Zill at his heels.

Zelda sighed again and mounted the steps with Aryll. The blonde girl pulled out her key, unlocked the door and they all stepped inside.

"I'll be right back," said Aryll and disappeared into her bedroom.

"Gee, it's cold in here!" Joel declared.

"Of course it is," Zelda replied as she followed her friend partway to the apartment's tiny hallway. "No one's been living here."

Zill began poking around Link's dresser drawers, pulling out one after another and then slamming some of them shut when he didn't find anything. Not to be outdone, Joel marched over and started doing the same thing, except he looked under the drawer linings as well. Then one of the boys smacked his brother with a drawer he opened too quickly, there was a scuffle, and their sister turned to see them rolling around on the floor.

"Cut it out!" she exclaimed as she pulled them apart. "Can't you two behave for one minute?!"

She shook them and they hung their heads. "Sorry, Zellie," Joel muttered.

Zill added his apology too, and then said, "We just wanted to help. If we found something you might be happy again."

She swallowed a lump of emotion that rose to her throat, refusing to soften to their beguilingly innocent way. They were really very sweet, but also very, very naughty. She glared down at them and tried to blink away the moistness around her eyes. "Give me one good reason why I shouldn't just take you back home this minute!"

"Oh, don't do that. Let them have their fun," came a soft voice from the doorway.

Zelda's heart almost stopped as those words fells across her ears. Someone else had said a similar thing in regard to her brothers, but it couldn't be he! She recognized the voice and knew it was not his, but still she whirled around. There was Aryll, standing in the doorway with her skates slung over her shoulder while she tried to muster a tiny smile. Her eyebrows dipped when she glimpsed her friend's rather stricken expression.

"What's wrong, Zellie?" queried the blonde young lady as she stepped nearer.

The other girl shook herself and tore her eyes from Aryll. She looked down at her brothers and then back up. "Why did you say that?"

Aryll gave a little shrug. "It just seems a shame to go back when we've come this far… We should go skating. But why did you look like that? It was almost like you'd seen a ghost. Were you…thinking of Link?"

Zelda nodded. "It's nothing. I'll…tell you about it later, all right?" She glanced down at her brothers, who were busy poking each other as if their fingers were imbued with the blame they wished to pass off. "That's enough, you two. March yourselves downstairs, and _no more fighting_!"

They scurried for the door and made a race of their descent. Meanwhile, the two young ladies also exited the apartment and paused outside while Aryll turned the key in the lock. She straightened up, slipped the key in her purse and then frowned when she saw her friend dabbing at her eyes with her handkerchief.

"Are you sure you're all right?"

Zelda nodded and tucked the cloth back into her own pocketbook. She didn't want to cry; she'd ruin her makeup and make herself a sight, she'd be miserable and she'd probably give herself a headache. And Christmas Eve should have been such a joyful, expectant day…

But Aryll wasn't ready to let it go at that and she pressed further as they moved toward the stairs. "What did I say that affected you so? Please tell me."

The elder girl sighed and then turned her head partway to her friend. "You said…'Let them have their fun.' Link said that too…last year…when Zill and Joel ran into him in the park. It was just so sudden and it surprised me, that's all."

"Oh yes, I see," murmured the golden-haired young lady. "I'm sorry…"

"Don't be, Aryll. It's not your fault. And I guess it's not so strange that you both might say a similar phrase," Zelda said, and gave her companion a squeeze of the hand. Her own heart was still thumping quickly within her chest.

The four of them piled into the taxi again, and several minutes later they arrived at Malo Plaza. The boys were just priming themselves for another race down the few steps and then onto the ice, when their sister gripped at the backs of their jackets. They squirmed but couldn't quite get free. For a girl, she was a bit too strong, or so they thought. She made them sit on a bench and plunked their skates in their laps.

"Put them on, and no complaints," she bade them. "I will not have you running out on the ice like you did last time."

Joel and Zill struggled with theirs amid grousing and muttering. The young ladies quickly donned their skates and then helped the boys. As soon as they were properly outfitted, the little rascals clomped to the ice and immediately began gliding quite ungracefully across its surface. Zelda and Aryll meanwhile were much more reluctant to go right out make believe they were having the time of their lives. Aside from casting frequent glances at the boys, they watched the other people too, and felt a little sadder in their hearts because everyone else seemed to be smiling broadly and enjoying themselves so thoroughly. Zelda almost wished she could forget the day they'd spent with Link, if only for a little while, just so she could enjoy herself for the afternoon…

"Hey, come on! Skate with us!" Joel begged, coming up to his sister and pulling at her hand.

"Yeah! You're no fun!" Zill cried. His nose was running and he took a swipe at it with the back of his mitten.

Zelda took out her handkerchief and required him to blow his nose. When that was taken care of, she gazed down at them, considering their plea. She knew she was being selfish and silly for her prolonged sadness about Link, but she wasn't quite sure how to pull herself out of it. Then she sighed, and took Zill's palm in one hand and pulled at Joel's with the other. She gestured to Aryll, who took the younger boy's other side.

"You want to skate? Then let's skate," she said with some renewed vigor. She tried to smile, but it didn't quite reach past the sorrow in her eyes. "Don't let go now!"

They skimmed along the ice like that, widening out wherever there was room, or stringing themselves into a thin line whenever they had to skirt around other people. Now that they were skating and the girls weren't gazing sadly at the others having fun, some of those others instead noticed them and the way two young women would take a part of their Christmas Eve and spend it with a couple of boys who bore resemblance to each other and to the elder of the young ladies. One such watcher was a little girl, who pulled at her mother's sleeve and pointed.

The foursome came to a stop at the side of the rink, Zelda insisting that she needed a little breather. She leaned against the railing and surprised herself a bit to find that she didn't feel in quite such low spirits, even though the ache in her heart remained.

"Um… hello," said a small voice.

Zelda turned her head and saw a young girl who seemed familiar to her. Standing behind the child was a woman of about medium height, with a kindly, smiling face, and dark red hair that was partially covered by her hat. Zelda thought she'd seen her before too.

"Hello," she replied, and though she hadn't caught up with her breath yet, she found herself smiling at the girl's red-cheeked glow and the earnestness with which she spoke.

"Are you the lady who was with Santa… uhm I mean, Mr. Link?"

Recollection came to her, flooding her mind with fresh emotion that showed through to her expression. "Yes, I am. And you are the little girl my brothers ran into before, aren't you?"

The child nodded and looked beyond the young women for a moment. "Where is Santa…Mr. Link? Oh, is he at the store?"

Zelda's lips suddenly lost all vestiges of her smile. "Well, no, he's not…"

The girl, too, had a frown pulling at the corners of her mouth. "Where is he?"

Fortunately at that moment, the lady with the girl stepped forward and suggested, "Would you like to go over there and talk?" She gestured to the little café doing a robust business to the side of the rink. "It looks busy, but perhaps we'll be able to find a table."

"Yes, thank you. That's sounds splendid," replied Zelda, letting her breath out in a rush.

"I suppose we should at least know each other's names," the lady said with a little chuckle. "I am Anju Dotour and this is my daughter, Saria."

"I am pleased to meet you," Zelda said, and then introduced herself, her friend and her brothers.

They entered the little café and managed to secure a booth to the side where they could better hear each other over the din of conversation and music. It was a snug fit for all six of them, but the children just had to squeeze in a bit more. The boys protested about leaving the ice, but their sister hushed them and told them more gently that they would all have a cup of hot cocoa. After that, the boys could go back and skate some more if they wanted. Even so, the brothers fidgeted, poked each other and kept sliding around on the slick seats, until Zelda separated them by sitting between them.

They each ordered their hot drinks, and the children were also allowed a small treat. While they waited, Zelda eyed the young girl sitting across from her and questioned gently, "Did you meet Link when he was substitute Santa last year?"

Saria again nodded, her face opening up in a sweet, shy, childlike smile. "He was so nice. I didn't forget him at all!"

"Ah, and that's how you recognized him when we were skating a few weeks ago, hm?"

The girl again indicated in the affirmative. "Do you know what he said to me?"

"What?" Zelda asked.

Just then, a waitress in a white apron and trim red skirt and blouse arrived with their hot beverages on a tray. She set them before the little group and hurried off. The boys immediately took loud sips of their drinks and bit into their cookies.

With one hand curled around her mug, Anju also looked down at her daughter. "Yes, what did he tell you, dear?"

Saria glanced up with a bit of milk on her upper lip. "He promised me someone was out there waiting to adopt me. He said I should keep smiling and wait for them to find me. And it happened, too!" Her eyes flew up and met the equally blue ones of her mother's. "Mummy and Daddy found me and we've been so happy!" Then she glanced back at Zelda and queried, with a puzzled tilt of her head, "But how do you think he knew?"

"I suppose…it's probably because he's smart, don't you think?" the young lady replied, and as she both watched and listened to the young girl, she could understand why Link had taken a liking to her. "Saria… do you remember anything happening when you were there at the store? I know it was a whole year ago, but please think about it carefully. Did one of the big displays get damaged?"

The joy on Saria's face was replaced with sudden guilt as she stared down at her lap.

Zelda saw her reticence and guessed that she did know but was perhaps afraid to tell. "You see, Link got into trouble because of a broken display, and I was wondering if you knew anything about it. But you don't have to worry; no one is in trouble now. In fact, I'm sure everyone else has forgotten it."

The girl raised her head, her eyes wet with unshed tears. Just above a whisper, she said, "He shouldn't have gotten into trouble. I… I broke it. But I didn't mean to! Someone bumped me…and I fell. He… he was so nice! He said…it wasn't my fault."

Her heart giving a great lurch as she just began to realize the extent of sacrifice he had made for the little girl and what it had cost him, Zelda held her gaze. "You needn't feel sad about it anymore. If Link said it was an accident, then it was an accident," she declared resolutely.

Saria sniffled, stared at the young woman for a moment, and then released a long breath and took a sip of her cocoa. "Where is he?"

"Well…" Zelda faltered. She glanced at Aryll, who gave her a commiserative look. "You see…"

"Oh, he's not sick, is he?" Saria questioned, her bright, round face crinkled in concern for him. She glanced up at Anju. "Mummy, couldn't we make some soup to bring to Sa—Mr. Link?"

That lady made a slight grimace, as if the suggestion was beyond her capabilities. "We'll see about that, dear. Perhaps we can do something, anyway." She smiled at her daughter's once more blithe expression. "I see you've finished your cocoa already. Would you, Joel and Zill like to skate by yourselves for a little while?"

The boys had already finished with their drinks and the biscuits their sister had allowed them. They were all but bouncing in their seats and kept turning to try and see out the window where the activity was happening. They both crowed, "Yes! Yes! Please!" and looked beseechingly toward Zelda.

"You may go," she told them. "But I expect you to behave yourselves like little gentlemen. Watch where you're going and be polite to Saria. Is that understood?"

The boys nodded dutifully, but all the time they were grinning and glancing at each other. They slid out of the booth and stood, rocking back and forth on the balls of their feet as they waited for the girl.

With a little worried tilt of her eyebrows, Saria turned to her mother. "Will you stay here, Mummy?"

"Yes, I'll be right here," Anju assured her, and kissed the little upturned face. "We can see each other through the window. We'll finish our cocoa and then we'll join you. How does that sound?"

"Okay," the little one replied, a small smile coming through her concern.

The three children marched off, the boys considerably more animated and impatient than Saria. The girl seemed to know that the adults wanted to talk about something they didn't want her to hear, and she was very quiet as she wondered what it was, and if it was about Santa Link. She put her skates on again, fumbling with the laces because her fingers hadn't quite warmed up yet. The boys were having more difficulty with their skates, due to their eager haste to get them on. She eyed them askance for a moment, remembering how they had barreled into her the other time. They didn't look like they were about to do that again, however.

"Would you like some help?" she asked softly.

The brothers glanced at each other, as if trying to decide whether they should accept help from a girl. She wasn't much older than them and she certainly wasn't any bigger. Zill gave another frustrated tug and then dashed his skate to the ground with an exasperated cry.

"Sure!" the brothers agreed.

She loosed the laces on their skates and they marveled for just a moment how easy it was to get them on after that. The boys slipped in their feet, kept snug with thick stockings, and hurriedly tied up the laces. It was not nearly as neat as Zelda would do it, but they didn't care so long as their skates didn't come off. Then they dashed out to the ice and began chasing each other, with Saria trailing behind. She turned a couple of times, spotted her mother through the window and waved.

Meanwhile, Zelda and Aryll both gazed across the table at the redheaded lady. "Thank you for suggesting that," said the blonde young woman as she interlocked her fingers and pressed them firmly together. "We…didn't know how to tell her…"

Zelda reached over and squeezed her hand. "…It's clear Link made quite an impression on Saria. We didn't want to upset her… because, you see…" She swallowed thickly as the familiar lump of emotion clogged her throat and made her sound hoarse. "…He's gone missing."

Anju' own expression turned somber, her eyes growing sad. "Oh no! I'm so sorry. That must be very hard on you…both of you."

"Thank you…" Aryll murmured as she absently turned the warm mug around in her hands.

"Have you been to the police?"

To Zelda's mind jumped an image of the scowling, difficult Zauz and she remembered all the times she'd felt discouraged. She drew in her lip, wondering why she was so willing to discuss the matter with a woman she hardly knew. She felt a twinge of annoyance over Anju's concerned questions, but she pushed it down as one might suppress the coils of an ornery jack-in-the-box.

"Yes. The police have been looking…and they haven't found him yet. We're trying to keep hopeful, but it is…hard. It just doesn't seem right, that he should be gone now, and Christmas tomorrow…" she trailed off, knowing she was on a path that would lead to a cascade of tears.

"I'm sorry," Anju said again.

The woman turned her glance out the window and spotted her daughter. Saria smiled at her, waved and then wobbled a bit on the ice. The two young ladies also looked out and glimpsed the same sight. Zelda held up her gloved hand before the glass, but she did not wave it.

"Will you tell her?" she queried, turning her eye back to the other woman.

"I think I shall have to," Anju replied, a regretful twist to her lip. "She knows something is wrong. She is very smart, that little girl is. I find it hard to believe that we've only had her with us a few months."

Alight with recognition, Aryll's eyes immediately found the other lady's. "She is adopted?"

"Hm, I thought she looks a bit like you though," Zelda mused at almost the same time, glad to have something else to occupy her thoughts.

Anju smiled. "It's her eyes. My husband said the same thing when we first saw Saria. We knew right away that we wanted her. You see… when we learned we couldn't have children of our own, we decided to adopt. You can't imagine all the red tape we had to go through so we could finally make her our daughter!"

The blonde girl nodded. "My parents adopted me about ten years ago and they say it was awful even then."

Anju blinked and her whole expression intensified at her keen interest as she leaned slightly forward. She was still rather young herself. She was no more than a decade older than Aryll and less than eight above Zelda.

"I just had an idea! If you would be agreeable, my husband and I would welcome any insights and such you might have for us, seeing as you were adopted too."

"I don't know what I could possibly tell you…" Aryll said, and paused. "But I suppose it couldn't do any harm. I would like to see you and Saria again anyway, I daresay. Wouldn't you, Zelda?"

The elder girl quickly added her assent. She'd felt a bit left out, as the conversation had drifted to something she could not claim as one of her experiences, but she chided herself for being foolish and kept her mind on the present. She supposed that adoption was a wonderful thing, when it worked out right as it had with Aryll and seemed to be with Saria as well. But then, like with so many things, her mind drifted to Link and she wondered if anyone had ever wanted to adopt him. She couldn't change his past or give him a ready-made family, but at least she could give him her own affection…

Aryll drained the remaining sip of her cocoa. Zelda had forgotten hers as it sat in its mug getting colder and colder; she pushed it back, feeling that she couldn't stand another drop of it. It was slightly sweet, carrying with it the particular, yet not bitter, taste of the chocolate, and while she normally would have delighted in it, now she was too distracted.

"I should go find Saria now," Anju declared, and she reached for her purse.

Zelda shook herself from her reverie, reached for her own pocketbook and insisted, "No, no, I'll take care of it."

The redheaded lady hesitated. "That's very kind of you… Are you sure? I feel cheap letting you take the whole thing."

"It's the least I can do. Our party is twice the size of yours, after all," Zelda replied, and she placed on the table the required rupees, plus an added sum as a generous tip.

"Well then, thank you," Anju said, a smile lighting up her face again. She opened her purse and slipped out a few more rupees; it was almost Christmas and the waitress would be pleased.

They went back outside, donned their skates and joined the children already on the ice. Saria skimmed toward her mother and almost couldn't stop in time. She clenched Anju's hand and told her she'd been waiting for her. The boys, meanwhile, chased each other, racing circles around the females until Zelda reached out, grabbed one of her brothers and spun around until she could get him to stop.

"Have you two been good?" she inquired. She'd seen some of their antics from the window, but none of it had been more than boyish energy being expended.

"Sure we have!" Zill cried, as if she'd accused them.

"We didn't run into anybody!" Joel added for good measure.

"They've been very nice," Saria said, glancing away from her mother but still holding her hand. "They tried to teach me a game, but I'm afraid I wasn't very good at it."

Zelda gazed upon her brothers, glad that for once she didn't have to scold them for one of their escapades. Oh, she'd seen them when they tried to show off in front of the girl, but fortune must have been on their sides because no calamity occurred as a result.

Before long, darkness was came upon them like a mantle covering the world, brought on seemingly sooner by the promise of another snowstorm. Most of the skaters still there were thinking increasingly of warmer environs. Anju declared that they must go back to the inn she ran with her husband, and she pressed a card each into one of Zelda and Aryll's hands.

"It's been a real pleasure talking to you both," the redhead woman said. "Please do drop in sometime."

"Thank you," responded the young ladies. They promised they would come by sometime soon.

The little girl glanced up and beckoned to Zelda with one of her gloved fingers. The latter leaned down and Saria put her mouth near the young woman's ear.

"Miss Zelda…are you going to marry Mr. Link?"

She made a little startled sound in her throat. She coughed, spluttered and gasped in return, "I… I don't know."

Saria pulled back slightly. She had a feeling that was exactly what would happen; it seemed to her that it always did happen to nearly everyone eventually. "That's too bad," she said, her voice still quiet, but she was no longer whispering. She paused, blushed, and added in a murmur, "…Because I hoped he'd wait until I grew up so I could marry him…"

Zelda didn't know whether to smile or weep. Her heart gave a great heavy thump. She knew her mouth was open; she pressed her lips together and bit at the bottom one. Finally she decided to kiss the young girl, but she couldn't keep her heart from beating so erratically. Then they all wished each other a Merry Christmas and the mother and daughter ascended the steps and were gone from sight.

The boys begged their sister to take them somewhere else, for they were never ready for the fun to end till they dropped from exhaustion. They gleefully suggested going to Rupin's, but Zelda curtailed that idea a little more sharply than she had intended. She and Aryll were cold in body in spirit and merely wanted to return home. Amidst Zill and Joel's protests, the girls ushered them into a cab and they settled in for the ride.

Zelda kept looking out the window and glancing at her watch after she initially realized how late in the afternoon it was getting to be. She recalled over and over the words Saria had spoken, realizing how close the little girl had come to her own thoughts. She had to admit to herself that she had hoped for marriage…but that looked far more unlikely for her now. Her heart beat quicker as she hoped beyond reason that a call would be waiting for her upon her return. However, she was only to be disappointed, as the only message for her was from a slightly inebriated friend who hadn't seen her in weeks, inviting her to a party. She didn't return the call and instead fled to her room.

~O~

_Why do I even bother writing in this? No one will see it. I am just going to die here and no one will know or care. Nothing matters anymore, not Christmas, not friends, not family, nothing… I don't want to do anything. I just want to lie here…and die. I'm so cold… Even if I pile all the blankets on top of me, I still shiver with the chill. Has the temperature dropped or is it all in my mind? Perhaps I will die from the cold before I die of starvation…_

Link let the pages of the book fall together and his pencil dropped from his fingers. He was too weary or just didn't care enough to pick either of them up again, or to hide them as he usually did. Tears shone at the corners of his eyes and he shut them firmly as if he hoped to keep them back by so doing. It seemed as though there was nothing left for him, and even thoughts of Zelda were far away, as if in a dream.

He wanted to die and he wanted to live, but he was afraid because the former thought seemed to slowly be overtaking and devouring the latter. No matter how he'd tried to stave off such rumination, his mind had drifted to all the ways he could end his life. He could use the razor from his shaving kit, but the crooks had removed the blade, probably so he could not use it against them. He might be able to find a particularly sharp shard of the broken glass on the other side of the room, but that required too much effort and probably wouldn't even work nearly as well as an actual blade. He could probably strangle himself with his tie. Or he could throw off the blankets and his extra clothes and just let himself freeze, except he was so weak he didn't even want to go to that trouble.

He couldn't glimpse anything of the outside world, as the snow covered all but the very top of the window. The room became darker and gloomier as night set in and he didn't even get up to turn on the light. He figured it would probably just go out, anyway. Eventually, somehow, he fell asleep but even then he had no respite. He dreamed that he was still trapped in the basement of his drunken foster father, that he'd never escaped it at all. …And he dreamed that he hanged himself.

* * *

01-11-2020 ~ Published (7,793 words)


	13. Darkest Hour

**Keeping Hope for Christmas - by Pseudo Twili**

Chapter 13: Darkest Hour

Zelda awakened on Christmas morning with tears still wet on her cheeks. She'd dreamed that Link was lying in the ditch of an undistinguishable road, unmoving, unnoticed and slowly being covered with snow. She'd wanted to scream, to cry out, to run to him, to stand in the road until someone would stop and help her, to pull him close and try to make him warm again. But in her dream she had seemingly no power over her limbs and she could only watch as he became a mere lump beneath the millions of tiny flakes that covered the world.

"It was just a dream," she murmured to herself, placing a hand over her throbbing heart.

She heard a slight sound and turned her head, but it was only the shifting of the half-burnt logs in the fireplace; clearly one of the servants had come in while she was still asleep and built the fire up again. On especially cold days, the furnace wasn't enough to heat all the cold corners of some rooms.

She wiped at her face again and glanced around. For just a moment she expected to see Aryll or at least some of her things. But then she had to remind herself, as she had so many times already, that her friend had insisted on moving to a different room just two days before. Aryll had declared quietly that she'd imposed on Zelda quite long enough, and if she was going to remain in the Harkinian home she would at least give the elder girl some space. Zelda had protested that she didn't have to, but the golden-haired young lady remained firm and sadly gentle. She could be stubborn, just like her brother…

Zelda didn't want to have to rise from her bed, but after lying there for several minutes and turning first from one side to the other, she huffed and sat up. As she slid out of bed, she noticed that her crimson loftwing had fallen to the floor; she picked it up and set it on her pillow.

For some time she'd been planning on wearing a kelly green dress that she'd been saving for that day, having known that Link would like it. She pulled it from the back of her closet and drew it over her head before she'd fully thought it through, but as she took a quick look in the mirror she realized again that he wouldn't be there to see it. She sat down at her vanity table and wept. When she had calmed down and dried her tears, she almost decided to take it off in favor of another of the many pretty dresses in her closet, but she couldn't bring herself to do so. She didn't want to wear anything else.

Even when she had donned her stockings and shoes, put on a creamy-colored cardigan with flowers embroidered delicately along its edges, and brushed and pinned back her hair, she still dawdled in her room. She tried to summon some small measure of joy for the day, and instead she found herself wanting to cry again. She knew that she couldn't make Link appear just because she wished him to and because she was wearing the dress for him. She took a breath and released it, knowing also that her family and Aryll were likely waiting for her downstairs.

She realized also that she was ravenous for some of their chef's delightful breakfast delicacies. She couldn't truly enjoy them, however, as her thoughts were filled with concerns over her missing friend. She consumed enough so that her hunger was satisfied, and then as she took another bite of a fluffy raisin bun, she wondered if Link had enough to eat. Both her mind and her stomach balked at accepting another tiny morsel and she set down the bun.

Traipsing sadly through the hall, she found her family gathered in the living room. The boys were both crouched in front of the tree as they gazed upon the mounds of gifts and guessed which presents were theirs, Gustaf was standing to one side of the fireplace with one elbow on the mantlepiece, and Giselda was settled on the couch with a bit of knitting in her hands. Even Aryll was there, looking sad and wiping surreptitiously at her eyes when she thought no one was looking. It was a scene not to dissimilar from that of the previous year, except for the gap created by Link's absence, a hole that went straight through her heart.

"There you are, my dear!" the lady of the house greeted her daughter warmly.

"Merry Christmas, sweetie," the bearded gentleman said as he moved toward her. His voice didn't carry with it his usual booming joviality and he gazed at her as though he wished he could protect her from anything that made her sad.

She returned his greeting and kissed him on the cheek. She afforded the same gesture of affection toward her mother, but it was a hasty kiss that lacked warmth. Then she settled on the sofa between Aryll and her mother and watched listlessly as Gustaf handed his wife a small present. After that, the boys were free to tear into their own gifts. But when her father picked up a cheerily wrapped package from beneath the tree and placed it on her lap, she hastily set it aside and all but jumped to her feet.

"I'm sorry," she said. Her eyes were moist and she was unable to look at any of them. "I just can't. Not right now. Please don't ask me to."

Gustaf put his arm around her and she wanted to bury her face in his jacket. "Don't cry, sweetie," he murmured.

"We can finish opening the gifts later," Giselda said with a nod.

The young woman mumbled her thanks and was about to apologize again for being such a pill, but then they heard the distinct "dong!" of the doorbell. Zelda left the warmth and comfort of her father's embrace and hastened to the door, her heart alternatively in her throat and sinking to her stomach. She was hoping beyond all hope that the group had located Link at last and perhaps that was them now…even though Telma had promised to call. She scrubbed at her cheeks with one hand and then the other.

Techer had already answered the door by the time she arrived on the scene. She stopped abruptly as she saw a gray-haired couple in the entryway, their hats, coats and scarves frosted with snow. Her heart seemed to drop all the way to the soles of her feet. She knew they seemed quite familiar and for a moment she couldn't place them. Then she recognized them from a couple of trips she'd taken with Aryll and Link to the town where the younger girl had grown up.

She tried to put on a smile through her disappointment. "…Merry Christmas, Mr. and Mrs. Galen."

Her father and Aryll had followed her, and as soon as the blonde young lady caught sight of the newcomers, she gasped and with a cry of "Mother, Dad!" darted toward them, throwing herself in her mother's outstretched arms. She said something, but it was distorted by her sobs and muffled in her mother's coat. Perosa Galen put her arm around her daughter, while the lady's husband, Lester, rather awkwardly patted his girl on the back.

Gustaf suggested that they all go to the living room, and this they did as soon as the couple had removed their snowy outerwear. Aryll, her face considerably brighter but with the tears still hanging in her lashes like dew drops, captured her mother's right arm and her father's right and clung to them tightly as they walked through the halls. The girl did the honors of introducing them to their host and hostess.

Then, when they were all settled on the couch or armchairs, Aryll burst out, "How did you get here?! I thought the roads were too poor for traveling!"

"That's what I told your mother," Lester said, with a slight frown that he'd worn most of the trip. "But she wouldn't let anything stop her. It took nearly three times as long to get here, let me tell you. We were driving most of the night."

Perosa gave her husband a look, but her expression softened as she gazed upon her adopted daughter. She dabbed her handkerchief to Aryll's moist cheeks. "You sounded so sad when we talked to you on the phone yesterday. I just made up my mind that we had to come see you, no matter what! And don't pay any attention to your father's grumbling. He was as anxious to see you as I was."

"Mother… Dad…" Aryll murmured, her voice breaking. "…You're so wonderful!" She hugged her mother and then leaned over and kissed her father.

Zelda's heart swelled with joy for her friend. Aryll deserved such an unexpected, marvelous surprise for Christmas; she had no other family to spend the holiday with, and it was clear she was as much grieved by her brother's disappearance as was Zelda. She watched Aryll interact with her newly arrived parents and she felt glad… and for just a little bit she forgot about missing Link. But familiar ache hadn't really left her, even for those few minutes, and it returned to her with such vehemence that tears sprang to her eyes. It wasn't right that he wasn't there, enjoying the tree and the gifts with them! It wasn't anything like what she'd imagined when she'd begun making her Christmas plans nearly a month ago.

The atmosphere in the room seemed to brighten after the arrival of the Galens. The two men went off to stand near the fire where they talked of cars and politics and the state of the roads, while the elder ladies and their daughters chattered about their own subjects. Meanwhile, the boys played noisily with their new toys, sometimes to such a volume that one of their parents admonished them and they quieted for a time. Techer brought in an ample luncheon, which the Harkinians shared with their guests.

For a while, Zelda participated in the conversation about Christmas traditions in their families, but her mind drifted further and further from the subject. Though she still didn't know what she would give him, she thought of the gifts her parents and brothers had picked out for him, which were mundane things like shirts, socks and a tie. She'd helped wrap those presents and placed them under the tree in hopes that he'd be there to open them. Where was he?! And why didn't the group call with the results of their discreet investigation? Her mind tumbled in so many different, agonizing directions and her breath hitched as she tried to keep herself from breaking down in front of everyone.

Pretty soon she couldn't stand it anymore. She gestured to her mother and when Giselda came away from the others, she whispered, "I'm going to go out, Mother. I just can't sit here anymore!"

The lady put her hand on her daughter's arm, gazing worriedly at her. "By yourself? Dear, are you sure you should?"

Zelda's nutty brown curls jumped as she shook her head resolutely, her mind made up. "It'll just be for a little while. I just want to walk and have a chance to clear my head. I think…I'll go to the park."

Giselda pursed her lips and looked very much like she wanted to forbid her daughter from so doing. Then the intensity drained from her face, leaving only sadness and concern. "I'll call Ferrus to drive you."

But the young woman put her hand upon her mother's arm. "Oh, I don't want to disturb him. It's Christmas. I'll just get a cab… or better yet, I'll drive myself."

After her mother's customary remark to be careful, Zelda slipped out and put on her hat, coat, gloves, scarf and boots. Techer helped her with the garage door and he closed it after she'd pulled out in one of the smaller family cars. The drive to the park was chilly before the heater finally kicked in, and everything around her, save for the sound of the engine, seemed so quiet. Snow fell everywhere and traffic was drastically reduced, but still she drove slowly. When she arrived at her destination, there were miles of space along the curb to park, whereas other times it could be quite the challenge.

As she wandered aimlessly along the paths and beneath the trees' bare branches of Oracle Park, she kept thinking about her dream. Link had been lying partially on one side, his head turned away from her, yet somehow she had been able to see his face. She was still startled because his eyes had looked so cold and hollow, an icy blue, not at all like the warm, summer-sky blue that she knew them to be. Her heart gave a great, painful leap within her as she considered that she might not see those wonderful eyes again…and her own filled with tears until her face was cold and she could barely see.

~O~

Link was plagued by his own dreams. No matter how many times he tried desperately to think of something else, his mind betrayed him and kept slipping back to the prospect of hanging himself. He could see it almost as clearly with his waking mind as he had when he was asleep. As it was with some dreams, he'd supposedly hanged himself, and yet he was also standing below and watching his body swing back and forth. His breath had constricted and he'd awakened with his hands clawing at his throat. He pulled his collar away from his neck and sucked in dozens of cold, clear breaths.

He wrestled with the temptation to end it all, coming up with all the reasons that he should: he was slowly starving to death and his body wasting away, he was cold and more depressed than he'd ever been in his life, the crooks wanted to use him for their crimes, and he had no hope of escape… Surely there were more reasons, but he was too tired to make them concrete within his brain. A part of his mind screamed at him, that he should end his life as painlessly as possible, but still he held onto that little glimmer of something that whispered to him not to give up yet.

After a while, his mind seemed to grow hazier, as if he was in another dream. But it was real enough when Dorffman, Vlaatin, Griham and Daupple entered the room and the latter two hauled Link up and dragged him over to one of the chairs left there after his games with Zaht. He sagged in the seat and stared with unfocused eyes at the floor, while the boss of the gangsters stood solidly before him.

"You want food, don't you?" the large redhead asked through a king-sized cigar clenched between his teeth.

His breath smelled of liquor and he waved a bit of bacon in front of Link's nose. The young man raised himself just slightly and reached for the meat, but Dorffman snapped it away and popped it into his own mouth, after removing his cigar. Griham chortled and Daupple cracked his knuckles.

"Not yet," the big man said. "First you agree to work with us and then we'll give you something to eat."

But Link merely dropped his hand and lowered his head again. Why did they have to keep bothering him and asking him that which he would never consent to do? His head spun and he wanted to go to sleep forever.

Dorffman snarled, grabbed the prisoner's lapels with one hand, and lifted him clear out of the chair. It was no hard feat to perform, for the head gangster was a great brute of a man and Link had lost so much weight besides. The young fellow found himself staring vacantly at Dorffman's enraged expression and narrowed amber eyes. The gangster slapped him twice, ferociously. His grip on Link's topcoat was so viciously tight that the captive felt short of breath.

"Answer when I speak to you!" the crook barked, and then all but threw him back into the chair.

Link felt his jaw and his lip, the latter of which was bleeding. "You can go to the demons," he muttered.

Dorffman's mouth hardened around his cigar.

"Let me at 'im, boss!" Griham begged. "I'll learn him a thing or two!"

"All right, have at it," the big man agreed.

Dorffman's coat was open and he hooked his finger on the top of his trousers. He moved a few steps to the side, and as he did, Link caught the briefest of glimpses at the gun he carried. Then Griham loomed up in front of the young man and dealt him swift punch. Link tried to move his head but his reflexes were too slow and the blow connected just below his eye. The sadistic crook wore an expression mixed with malice and dark glee as he struck the prisoner twice more. Then Dorffman held out his arm and Griham moved back.

"I'll give you one more chance," the gangster boss growled. "Join us and we'll let you see your sister."

"She misses you," Daupple added. "Cries for you every day. So far the boss hasn't let us try to comfort her, but when he does…" He grinned nastily.

Link's eyes snapped up to the crooks. "You don't have my sister."

The other crooks exchanged surprised glances, with Daupple whispering something like, "How'd he find out?!"

But Dorffman's face didn't even twitch. "You'll join us. You haven't any out. We've seen to it that you'll be charged with pulling off several burglaries if we let the police get to you."

Is that why they'd wanted his fingerprints? Link wondered. If his body could send enough energy to his brain so he could think straight, he might have been able to figure it out, but everything was too cloudy. Everything around him still seemed distant and removed, as if he was still dreaming. The smarting of his cut lip and throbbing cuts and forming bruises where he'd been struck weren't from a dream, however; it was more of a nightmare.

"Your name is mud," Vlaatin crowed, for that had been his idea. "The owner of the store is calling for your head. The police have an all-points bulletin out on you."

"…I don't…care," muttered Link, his chin again sinking to his chest. "I won't do it!" Though his eyes seemed heavily lidded, he was actually looking for his chance.

"Join us," Dorffman said, his deep voice thick with inviting temptation. "Join us and I'll see to it that you receive your fair share of each haul. That's a lot of mazuma. Hundreds of thousands of rupees. You'll be rich. You'll never have to work another day at that crummy store."

Daupple and Griham frowned and started forward, but their boss stayed them with a single gesture of his large hand. They didn't want to take a smaller cut! But they knew better than to argue with their leader when he was so preoccupied. They screwed up their faces, scowled and looked nastier than ever.

Perhaps the offer was alluring, but Link didn't let himself dwell on it. This time he didn't reply at all, watching and waiting as Dorffman took one more step near him.

The big man viewed the prisoner and a mirthless smile took over his features, a dark chuckle passing his lips. "But you don't care about that either, do you? All you want is to eat, isn't that right?" He snapped his fingers and held his hand out to the side. "Your sandwich, Daupple. Give it to me."

The other crook complied, reaching into his pocket and withdrawing a half sandwich he'd tucked away from his lunch. Dorffman held it in one large fist and pulled back the paper wrapping, letting the smell of the meat, cheese, onions and wheat bread reach the captive. Oh, how Link wanted to grab it and wolf it down faster than he could chew! He wanted to so badly that he could nearly taste it. But it came at too great a price. He tensed and clenched his fists.

"Just one word and it's yours," declared Dorffman, his words punctuated by the crinkling of the waxy brown paper.

"Make up your mind quick," sneered Griham. "The boss ain't a patient man!"

Link sprang at Dorffman with the suddenness of a canine leaping at its prey, though he was more prey than any of the crooks were. He managed to catch the big man off balance and they both went down on the floor. He flailed weakly at the large gangster's face with one fist, while with the other he was reaching for something else. The element of surprise was with him for a couple of seconds before the others had a chance to react.

Dorffman's fist connected rather solidly with the side of Link's face and stars erupted into his vision. The other crooks were shouting things that Link didn't quite hear; they reached down and hauled the prisoner off their boss. They were none too gentle with him as they dragged him back to his mattress and threw him roughly down. They cursed him, and Daupple kicked him twice. Link groaned and curled in on himself, his breath coming in raw, painful gasps.

"Dirty little pipsqueak!" seethed Griham.

"I didn't think he'd have nerve enough to do that!" Vlaatin said, glancing at his boss. "…Guess he's pretty hungry."

"Lousy son of a remlit!" snarled Dorffman, his face red even through his dark complexion. He lifted one hand to his lip and cursed.

The sandwich lay on the floor where it had fallen. The contents were oozing and sliding out because in the hubbub someone had trodden upon it. Daupple stooped, picked it up and stared at it distastefully. Meanwhile, Griham was trying to brush off his leader's coat.

"Lay off!" the big man growled, lashing out at him.

Vlaatin faced Dorffman, his own expression calm and collected again. "What are we going to do with him now, Boss? If he won't help us, then he's a liability, a millstone hanging around our necks. And I've heard some rumblings that someone's asking questions. It's too dangerous to keep him around."

"I told you we should've bumped him from the start!" exclaimed Griham, adding his rupee's worth.

"Close your head, you nitwit!" snapped Dorffman as he again took a swipe at Griham. The latter scowled and moved to the other side of the table.

"Pinhead," Vlaatin muttered under his breath, casting a sideways glance at the retreating man. "You're a trigger-happy fool. Killing's a messy business, to be avoided whenever possible."

"Now we have to get rid of him somehow," their leader said, folding his arms and glaring at Daupple. "You had to go and make a snatch and get us into this fix, didn't you?!"

"Sorry, Boss!" Link's lookalike backed away a few steps; he didn't want to be on the receiving end of his leader's wrath any more than the other crook did. "Err… Say, I know a captain who takes his ship to the seas way south of here. They don't hit land for a couple months at least. We could dump the sap aboard and tell my friend the captain to do whatever he likes with him."

Not to be outdone, Griham burst forth with an idea of his own, but he still kept his distance. "What's wrong with a bullet through his brain? And then we just dump him in the river!"

This time Vlaatin wanted to give him a good sock in the kisser. "Bodies come up sometimes, numskull!"

"Enough!" roared Dorffman, with enough volume to make the others jump to some degree. "I'm going back to the party! You can bore me with your ideas later!"

With that, the large man stalked from the room. The other crooks glanced at each other; Vlaatin glowered at the other two and then hastened after his leader. Griham and Daupple departed a moment later, arguing between them as to the best way of disposing of their prisoner. Daupple was careful to take the ruined sandwich with him, wrapped back up in its paper so that it would not soil the inside of his pocket; he would dispose of it at his earliest possible convenience.

After the door slammed and the gangsters slid the bolt back into place, Link tried to rise from his mattress and groaned. A fresh, sharp ache made him catch his breath. He pressed at a spot on his chest and hissed; every inhalation, every movement sent another jolt of pain through him, like the myriad reflections of a prism. His eyes were wet and he'd almost decided to flop on his mattress again and never get up.

But through it all, his fuzzy mind told him to take account of what he'd done. Then he remembered. Reaching into the many layers he wore, he withdrew the pistol he'd taken from Dorffman's holster. It was a hefty thing, a forty-five caliber piece that looked as mean as the man who owned it. Handguns of that size and caliber were typically used by the military, but there were certainly some that found themselves in civilian possession.

His fingers trembling with both cold and fatigue, Link slid the magazine out, saw that it contained a full seven rounds of perfectly normal bullets, and slipped it back in again. He lifted it with both hands, doubting that he could even wield it properly. The niggling voice in his mind told him that it would be easier than ever to kill himself… All it would take was the bullet through his brain that Griham had been so keen on. He stared at the gun and turned it partway around as he grappled with the idea. He realized that he'd just be making it easier for the crooks to be rid of him, although they would still have to dispose of his body.

He laid the pistol on his mattress and covered it with one of the blankets. He wouldn't use it on himself, but as soon as he'd ended that argument, the thought of hanging himself again pushed itself brashly to the forefront of his mind. He could do it fairly easily; he had his ties in the valise and there were even some pipes exposed in the ceiling near the door to the little washroom. He grit his teeth as the images from his dream floated before his eyes. He could practically see a body dangling from the ceiling, but he knew it couldn't be his…yet.

He jerked up as the idea and the deep ache in his chest struck him like lightning from the heavens. He gasped for breath. Perhaps… Perhaps there was a way, one chance for him…if his mind wasn't just fooling him into thinking it was a viable plan. He staggered to his feet and reached for the valise, trying to make his breaths shallow enough that they didn't pain him so, but sucking in great gulps of air to satisfy his need. He had to work quickly! …Before Dorffman realized his piece was missing and came back to retrieve it.

~O~

Zelda drifted along the park pathways like a ghost of flesh and blood. She saw but two people during those hours she spent going round and round; a tramp was sleeping on a bench, his shivering form covered by newspapers, until a weary policeman on patrol made him get up and leave. She felt terrible for the bedraggled man with nowhere to go on Christmas Day and she went after him. She slipped some rupees into his hand, which wasn't even properly covered by a holey, fingerless glove; her hope was that he would use it to buy some warm food and she did not consider that he might spend it on drink.

Her mind was all but consumed with thoughts of Link. It was perhaps the thousandth time that she agonized over and wondered about his disappearance. Had he wanted to get away from her? Is that why he'd all but brushed her off when he left her at her door? And why was he in that awful bar with the other man who bore resemblance to him? Link never imbibed while in her presence, but what if he actually had gotten drunk? What if he could come back but didn't want to? No matter how she tried to expel those thoughts from her mind, they kept stealing back to her like a beetle scurrying for cover of darkness.

She considered everything she and Aryll had learned from the people they'd spoken with during their little investigation. Batreaux and Bo had given her some insight as to the problem that he'd seemingly been wrestling with, but still she didn't know for sure. She felt, however, that it had something to do with her. She'd rather thought that he cared for her, though he didn't say it with words. Doubts about whether he did or not buzzed about her like a cloud of gnats.

She shivered and glanced up at the sky and then down at her watch. No wonder it seemed as though the overcast sky was getting darker! She'd been in the park well over two hours! She took a minute to get her bearings and then headed back toward her car. She frowned when she saw the snow that had accumulated on the vehicle. She spent several minutes trying to brush it off as best she could and then she huddled inside with the heater on, trying to warm up her hands. She was nervous about driving out on the roads again, as she knew everything was slick, but she maintained a slow speed all the way home, arriving safely and without a scratch.

Hardly was she inside the door, than Aryll, her coat unbuttoned and scarf streaming out to the side, flew up to her. "There you are, Zellie! We were just about to go out and look for you!"

The elder girl's hand froze as she was tugging at her own scarf. Her heart trembled too. "Why? What's happened?"

There was a moistness about the other young lady's eyes, and a sort of charged excitement that could mean anything. "Telma called. She said…" Aryll paused to take a quick breath. "…They've found someone who might know where Link is!"

Zelda's heart gave a great leap and her own breath nearly stopped in her throat. She choked, coughed, and then gasped out, "Link! Oh, I must go right down there!" She felt tears prickling at her eyes but she forced them away. It was no time to give in to her feminine emotions!

"I'm going with you," Aryll declared. She began fastening the buttons on her coat but then realized she was doing it crookedly and started over.

"No, I'll go," said Gustaf as he strode toward them. Giselda and the elder Galens were with him. "You two should stay here. You too, Zelda. I don't want you running into danger."

Lester stepped forward and placed his wrinkled hand on his adopted daughter's shoulder. "He's right, Arrie. You should stay here with your mother and me."

Aryll wavered, but Zelda remained firm. "I'm not staying here," said the elder girl, her eyes snapping up to meet her father's. "Don't try to talk me out of it, Dad! It's no use. If they know where Link is, I have to be there!"

He regarded her fiercely determined expression and saw that anything short of force would be wasted on her. His mouth scrunched downward and he rumbled, "All right, sweetie. But no taking chances, understand?" He patted his coat pocket, where he'd placed his revolver, just in case.

"Come on!" she begged him. "We have to hurry!"

She pressed into his hands the large topcoat which was his and rocked on her heels as she waited for him to don it. He gave his wife a quick peck and then turned to the door, where his daughter already waited.

"We'll call as soon as we know," Zelda promised, glancing at Aryll.

Her friend's eyes were wet, her mouth a crinkled frown as she lifted her hand in farewell. Then the door closed behind them and Zelda and her father were outside. They hastened toward the car that she'd arrived in just minutes before and this time Gustaf slid in behind the wheel, while she nearly jumped onto the other side of the front seat.

During the ride into the city and downtown, she bit her tongue several times to stop herself from nagging her father to drive faster through the snow. The trip seemed to her to take twenty times longer than it should have, but in reality it was only about double the time it would take in good weather. She kept her hands knotted on her lap and kept glancing out the window so she'd know where they were.

Her mind was awhirl with tumultuous thoughts that leaped one atop the other like the players in a game of football. Her heart was trembling in her chest, the blood pounded past her ears, and her breaths came quickly. Did she even dare hope? What if there was only disappointment in store for her? But, despite all her worst thoughts, she clenched her hands and prayed that everything would turn out all right. She had to remind herself to take deep breaths and try to keep calm.

Hardly a word passed between the father and daughter during that whole time. When they were nearing the destination, Gustaf asked if they were on the right street a couple of times. The first time they were on course, but the next time she told him he needed to be one street over.

"There it is!" she cried, and pointed to the place that still had lights burning in its windows, though they weren't as bright as most other evenings.

She was out of the car the moment her father had pulled up to the curb. He called after her to wait, but she didn't stop as she darted for the door and tried the knob. It was locked. She rapped on it and looked in through the window to the side. Two customers were leaning over the bar inside, but no one was behind it. Then Gustaf came up behind her and he pounded on the door again. They waited for a few moments, while she peeked through the window again and her father glanced around.

"There's Telma!" she exclaimed as she saw the woman emerge from the back room.

The proprietress hastened toward the front door, opened it a crack, and when she saw the young lady, she widened the gap. "Miss Harkinian, I'm glad you're here. We've run into a bit of a problem…" She ushered her inside, but hesitated when she saw the gentleman. "And who might you be, mister?"

"Oh, Telma, this is my father," Zelda said quickly. "Please, what did you find out?"

The redheaded woman looked him over briefly and then turned and locked the door again. She gestured to the back room and headed in that direction. They followed her, with Zelda glancing at the two patrons slumped over the bar.

"Don't worry about them," Telma told her. "They're harmless. Just as well off here as stumbling around on the street."

"I'm surprised you were open today," said Gustaf.

She shrugged. "Might as well be. Most of my friends come in here anyway, so why not?" She paused as they reached the curtain leading to the back. "I'll tell you right now, we have a fellow back here who says he knows about the gang we're looking for. But now he wants five hundred rupees before he'll talk. He's a stoolie, a sleazy sort who's always getting in the way asking for handouts, or poking his nose where it don't belong in hopes of getting something to use for blackmail. I don't like to ask this of you, but I don't keep much money here as a rule…and the others don't have enough even if we pooled together. Would you be willing to put it up?"

"Oh, we'll pay! Of course!" Zelda exclaimed anxiously. "Whatever it takes!"

Telma frowned, her brows lowering. "Don't let him know that, honey. He'll really hold you up if he thinks he can get away with it. Just let us handle the negotiations, you understand?"

The young lady nodded quickly, and then both she and her father followed Telma into the back room.

* * *

_ This chapter and the next were originally going to be one, but after writing most of it, I realized it was too much for one chapter. I don't want to subject you all to 13,000+ words all in one go, haha!_

* * *

01-13-2020 ~ Published (6,153 words)


	14. Into the Light

**Keeping Hope for Christmas - by Pseudo Twili**

Chapter 14: Into the Light

In the back room of Telma's Place, the other members of the group were present, except Shad. Seated between Rusl and Auru was a small man with a nervously twitching mouth, eyes that darted about shiftily, one of which was more red-rimmed than the other, and a shabby hat from under which his unkempt, uncut hair protruded. His clothes looked as though they were second- or even third-hand and were so dirty and flea-infested that they'd would better off being burnt than getting a good washing.

"Who's this now?" the wily little man questioned, his eyes lighting up with considerable interest and avarice.

"Never mind them," replied Telma shortly. "You were telling us about those crooks you say have been operating in town. How would you know about it?"

"Oh, I see things. Yes indeedy I do. And sometimes people don't know old Hoiger Howgendoogen is there, so I hear things too. These gangster types have been hanging around…well, I know where, and they don't like nobody else snooping anywhere near. They must keep their eye on the place the whole time. I went over there, just lookin' around, and a guy jumped me. Told me to beat it if I knew what was good for me. Oh, but I know they're hiding something in there! Probably all the loot from their holdups."

Zelda wanted to burst out with all the questions that flooded her mind, but she remembered what Telma had told her. She bit at the inside of her lip quite hard and clenched her fingers all the more tensely around her little handbag. If opening her mouth meant losing whatever clue they might have to Link, she'd wouldn't talk for anything.

"Cut the gab and get to the point," Ashei said as she glared at the man.

"What does all this have to do with what we asked you about?" questioned Auru.

Hoiger gestured to the photo on the table. "You wanted to know if I'd seen that guy, right? Well, one of them gangsters looks kinda like him. You lookin' for him too? I know where he is, but you have to pay!"

"Have you see the man in the photo?" Rusl pressed further as he stared down the shifty character.

The stool pigeon crossed his scrawny arms and frowned. "I ain't seen him. Hey, but I did see them carrying in a guy one night. He was so drunk he couldn't even walk. Two o' the others carried him in between them, and one of 'em didn't look too steady himself."

Zelda gasped and immediately covered her mouth. Her eyes were wide and moist and her hands shook. She felt her father move closer to her and take her arm; she reached over and grasped his hand.

"When was this?" questioned Rusl.

"'Bout two weeks ago, I guess," Hoiger replied. "I've wanted to get a look inside the place even before that… One of them's always there, though, keepin' watch. But I'll tell you where their hideout is…for seven hundred."

Ashei thumped the table with her fist and leaned forward. "Why you little…" she fumed, but kept herself from saying anything worse.

"You're getting greedy, Hoiger," chided Auru, his brows lowered and his mouth set in a frown. "You ask for too much and you're liable to get nothing."

The little man eyed Zelda and her father and blinked rapidly. "What about them, eh? You brought 'em in—now the price goes up."

"Just who do you think you're dealing with?" demanded Rusl. "You won't get a thing from anyone else!"

Telma folded her arms, staring at the stool pigeon. "I see now. You're playing both ends against the middle. You only came to us when you found out you couldn't blackmail those crooks. And now you're trying to hold us up! Well, I don't take that from anyone, especially not in my own place!"

The shifty fellow blanched and cowered before her words and her weighty glare. "I c-coulda gotten killed!" he protested weakly. "You gotta m-make it worth my while to spill what I know!"

Zelda trembled and clung closer to her father's arm. He patted her hand and then loosed his hold on her. He strode toward the table and thumped his fist upon its wooden surface. He reached into his pocket, held up a rupee of large denomination and tossed it to the stoolie.

"You will tell us where these men are hiding," he said, in his best booming, unyielding businessman voice. "I will give you three hundred more after you tell us, and the rest after you've taken us there. You try and welch on the deal and you won't have a safe place to crawl to by the time we're through! You understand me?"

Hoiger swallowed thickly and all but dropped the gleaming orange rupee. Rusl placed one hand on his thin shoulder and the stool pigeon knew he had no escape. He gulped again and squeaked, "They're in that old abandoned building on Mila Road!"

"I know the place. It used to be a restaurant, but it was only a cover for the gambling that went on in the back rooms. It's been shut down for years," Telma said with a slight nod. She fixed her withering gaze on Hoiger again, "If you're leading us astray…"

"I'm not! I swear I'm not!" the pitiful man whined. He slipped the rupee into his one pocket that didn't have a hole in it, and then fixed his greedy gaze on Gustaf. "Where's the dough you promised?"

The wealthy businessman pulled two more rupees from his pocket—one silver, one orange—and set them on the table. Hoiger leaned forward and snapped them up like a chipmunk darting out of the forest for a delicious morsel. He rubbed his fingers along the smooth edges of the currency, beholding it as if it was his long lost love.

Zelda's heart was beating so hard that she folded both hands and placed them firmly over her chest. "Link… he must be there!" she exclaimed in a half breathless way, unable to keep her tongue still a moment longer. "Have they been holding him this whole time?! We must get him out of there!"

Her tone became more frantic as she went on, her eyes shimmering with unshed tears. Her gaze flitted to the face of each the group members and then she turned toward the doorway leading back to hall and the front room. Her father placed a large, warm hand on her shoulder.

"You can't go there by yourself," he told her, his own tone gentle and firm at the same time.

"We're going to find your friend, little lady, don't you worry," declared Telma, coming to Zelda's other side. "But we're not so foolish as to try it on our own, so we've called for reinforcements. They should be here any minute now."

The group began migrating back to the bar, with Telma in the lead. She unlocked the door again and ushered out the only two patrons. Zelda kept her arm circled around her father's. Her heart beat a frantic rhythm against her ribcage; she wanted to fly out to the street herself, climb into the car and stomp on the gas until she went through wall of the building where she felt sure Link was being held.

Ashei took one glance at Hoiger and warned the other two men, "Don't let him out of your sight. I don't trust him any further than I can throw Linebeck Tower."

Needing no reminders, Auru and Rusl were already at either side of the unevenly-red-eyed stoolie. One or both of them had a hand on his arm at any given time. Hoiger squawked at their closeness and his own inability to scramble for cover like a dirty sewer rat, but the others either shushed him or ignored him completely.

Just as Telma had surmised, just a couple of minutes later a car pulled up to the curb and one of its occupants exited the passenger side and strode toward the building. Zelda recognized him as soon as he'd come close enough to the building to be caught in the light.

"Detective Zauz! What are you doing here?!" she cried, her brows suddenly scrunching as she remembered all the times that the man had discouraged her and told her she was wrong.

He was only partway inside. He glanced at her, let the door close behind him, and marched toward the group. "This had better not be a wild goose chase," said he. "I had to leave a fine party!"

"Of course it's important!" Zelda blurted out. "We know where to find Link!" She took a breath and continued, "We're sure he's there. He must be!"

Rusl gestured to the shifty stool pigeon at his side. "This character knows where the crooks have been hiding. He says he saw them take in a man who looked to be drunk. It matches up with what Purlo the cabbie told us."

The detective's brows were resting directly over his eyes, his mouth a scowl. His eyes flitted to Zelda's and then away. "It also matches up with a call we received."

"What do you mean?" demanded the young lady. Her eyes danced with all her pent-up, irate feelings toward him, and yet her lips trembled.

"You remember I told you of the false alarms we receive? There were many the night Wolfspaw disappeared, but I learned that one of them came from the Woodfall Tavern. It was some guy whispering that he'd found one of the men who'd robbed the store—he may have been referring to Rupin's. The line cut off before he could give more information. It was a sketchy call and when the patrolmen got there, no one knew anything about it."

"Do you see now, Detective? That was he! It was Link!" Zelda cried, the words turning into a little sob at the end.

Zauz folded his arms. "We've been trying to find the regular bartender, the one who was there that night. He was very close-mouthed about the whole thing when the patrolmen questioned him. I suspect he knows something, but he's run off somewhere"

"I might have an idea where he's hiding," Telma declared with a nod.

The detective glanced at her briefly and said, "We'll look into that later." He faced Zelda again. "It's all rather circumstantial so far, but I'm willing to admit it fits together too well to be just coincidence."

"You mean…you're going to help us?" she queried, disbelief making her mouth go slack. "Aren't you taking an awful chance?" It wasn't as if she was worried about him, but more that she was asking because she couldn't quite believe it.

"Maybe… but it's a chance I choose to take. If we do not find him, then you'll have nothing to bother me about. If we do find him, then I can get you off my back," he finished with a grumble.

He exited the building almost as quickly as he had entered, with Zelda, her father and the group, with Hoiger in tow, following behind him. The detective climbed into the patrol car again, the father and daughter into their vehicle, and the group dispersed themselves between the two. The ride was filled with a silence so tense that broaching it was like tapping one's finger to get rid of a charge of static electricity only to find that the world had seemingly exploded.

Zelda couldn't stop the erratic beat of her heart, the raspy tremor of her breath, or the shaking of her hands as she sat squeezed between Telma and her father, the latter of whom was driving. On so many other occasions she had hoped to find Link, or that he would show up on his own again, but those were hardly more than wishful day-dreams, a product of her anguished mind, and because she missed him so. Now the possibility seemed much more real, and she kept her mind on that hope, as if letting go of it would cause it to vanish.

They stopped just up the block from the building Hoiger had indicated. Other patrol cars, summoned by the detective by radio, were also pulling up and the occupants thereof piling out in with little noise and practiced speed. One of the men hurried up to Zauz and reported that he'd just seen four individuals enter the building. The redheaded detective hissed out orders to surround the abandoned restaurant and cover any and all exits. He and a few more officers prepared to enter from the front. Telma and her group also insisted on accompanying him, and because of the military, police, and tough bouncer backgrounds, and because he figured they'd follow regardless of his orders, he allowed it. He glanced at Zelda and warned both her and Gustaf to remain in the car. Then he and the others moved toward the front entrance.

"Where's the rest of my dough?!" Hoiger whispered. "I kept my end of the deal, so give it here!"

The businessman gave him three hundred more rupees and the stool pigeon scuttled up the street in the opposite direction. That just left both father and daughter to sit and wait the results of the sudden raid. Zelda could hardly breathe, she clutched so hard at her father's arm that she all but cut off his circulation, and she couldn't take her eyes off the entrance where Zauz and the others were just disappearing. Would Link be coming from that same door? She ached and trembled to see him.

~O~

Link didn't have his watch on him and thus he would never know just how long it took him to set it up. By the time he was done, his head was spinning and his ribs ached fiercely with each gulp of air he greedily swallowed. He wavered and placed an unsteady hand on the wall, fuzzily glancing up at his handiwork. It was crude, but he could only hope that in the shock of seeing it, someone might not at first notice the imperfections.

He had constructed a dummy by stuffing pieces of the blankets into his spare clothing. He used one of the few unbroken bottles for the head and used one of his ties to secure it to the body. He wrapped the bottle with one of his extra shirts and placed his spare hat on it to disguise it further. Then, using the table and one of the chairs, he precariously climbed up and looped another of his ties over the exposed pipes in the ceiling.

Dragging up the dummy proved to be nearly too much for him in his much weakened state, with each breath creating a new spasmic fire in his chest. Somehow he managed to hoist the dummy into the chair he'd placed on the tabletop. He fumbled with a second tie around its neck, eventually knotting it with the one he'd fastened around the pipe. Once he'd finally done it, he started to climb down and, his head spinning, he nearly tumbled right off the table. He caught himself and lowered himself safely to the ground, where he leaned his head against the chair. He wanted to lie down and rest more than anything, but he was afraid that if he did he wouldn't have the strength or the willpower to rise ever again.

After a minute or two of painful panting, he staggered to his feet again and removed the chair from the table. The dummy hung as he'd wanted, but the legs of the trousers still grazed the top of the table. He pushed the furniture away, until the dummy was dangling freely, the knots he'd made holding true. With the table still nearby, it looked as though he'd jumped from its surface and hanged himself…and it seemed almost like his dream all over again. With dim lighting, he hoped no one would be able to immediately tell the difference between a real body and the dummy.

Shuffling unsteadily toward the door, he leaned against it and pulled out the forty-five caliber Boarschnout he'd taken from Dorffman. He made sure the safety was on, so that he wouldn't inadvertently shoot himself, and he held the pistol by its barrel, his hands shaking. He didn't want to be forced to shoot anyone else, mostly because he couldn't be sure of his aim, but he might have to pull the trigger if his escape depended upon it.

He hit the button for the light switch, blinked a few times at the sudden darkness, and then looked out the little window in the door. Now came the ticklish part of his whole wild idea. He knew someone was around because the lights were on in the next room and he'd glimpsed some movement earlier. But if no one was in the adjacent room, who knew how long it would be before one of the crooks would come in and he could attract his attention. He didn't think he'd be able to keep himself up much longer.

He could hear his heartbeat thundering past his ears, his legs felt like flesh without any bones, sometimes his vision seemed to go all fuzzy, and everything around him seemed so distant and detached from him. The gun in his hand was like a weight dragging him down into a sea of sleep and he had to grip it harder to keep it from slipping out of his grasp completely. He wasn't sure if it was all real or just another dream.

As if from far, far away, he glimpsed movement in the next room. It took his mind several muddled moments to recognize the man who entered as Zaht, the short-tempered, childishly volatile gangster whom he'd blitzed at gin rummy. Link jerked and stumbled over his own feet, the gun clattering to the floor. He gasped, pressed a hand gingerly to his ribs and then picked up both himself and the pistol.

He reached around for the bottle with water that he'd kept by his mattress. Wielding it with muscles that didn't want to obey him, he swung it and smashed it on the floor. He caught one brief glance of Zaht with his head turned toward the bolted door, whereupon the crook charged toward him. Link shrunk back behind the door, clutching at the Boarschnout, his breaths raspy and painful.

Zaht unfastened the bolt and swung the door open with an oath on his tongue. With more light entering the room from the open portal, he glimpsed what seemed to be a dangling corpse. He started and stared up, another curse fleeing his tongue. Then, with another astounded exclamation of "Holy mackerel!" he moved closer to what he believed to be the body of the prisoner, wondering how long he'd been hanging and if he was well and truly dead. Because it was a dummy, it did not struggle and merely hung limply.

The crook had moved slightly away from the open doorway, giving Link his opportunity. The prisoner crept from behind the door, hardly daring breathe as he neared Zaht. He must have made some small sound or perhaps the gangster felt something was wrong, for he turned partway in the last split second. But he was too late, for Link raised the pistol and swung it against Zaht's head, striking the side rather than the back as he had intended. The crook went down like a sack of cement, and the young man fell on top of him, toppled by the momentum of his action and his own dizziness.

Link almost passed out himself, so exhausted and breathless was he after his exertion. But Zaht was only knocked out for a minute and already he was stirring. The captive crawled over to his valise and brought over whatever he thought might be useful. He'd used all his spare ties in rigging up the dummy, but then he remembered he was still wearing one, which he used to bind the crook's hands behind his back. He stuffed an unused sock into Zaht's mouth and tied his handkerchief around the gangster's head to keep the gag in place. He thought he didn't have anything left to bind Zaht's feet, but he spotted the crook's garishly awful tie and used that.

He was about to leave the room when he thought to check for any weapons on the man. He returned to the gangster's side and searched him, coming up with a snub-nosed thirty-eight and two knives. By that time Zaht was gaining consciousness again; his eyes jerked open and then bulged as he strained against his bonds. He tried to speak through the gag but without success, and he glared at Link, who had scrambled slowly back so as to be out of range of any kicks, or jabs of the knees.

The young man slipped the knives into his own pockets, along with both guns, and then he staggered right out of the room that had been his prison for what seemed like half of an eternity. Zaht was trying to shout at him, but all that came out were muffled, garbled sounds that Link ignored as he bolted the door… and this time he was not the prisoner! He moved forward into the next room, his step unsure and often throwing out a hand for whatever was nearby to steady himself. It felt as though he was walking through a world of dreams, with the floor beneath his feet and whatever he touched with his hands feeling like they were miles away.

The room in which he now found himself was at least twice the size of the one he'd just left. It had a couple of tables, one of which was coated with a thick layer of dust, and the other which looked like the crooks had been using it from time to time, as there were some cards, matches and a few empty bottles lying upon its surface. A couple dozen chairs were lined up and stacked against two of the walls, their seats or bottoms and every other surface also extremely dusty. There were some boxes and other odds and ends piled up, but Link paid no attention to them as he made for the opposite doorway.

He stumbled up a short flight of stairs, and at the top he found himself in a hall that was dark except for the light behind and below him and another sliver of luminescence that came from a partly open door at the other end. It didn't even occur to him to try to find a light switch. He wobbled through the inky black passage, going cautiously and stretching forth his arms to feel for the walls. He kicked and stumbled into a few small obstacles, bits of trash or debris that he could not see, but he did not trip. His ears thrummed with the sound of his heartbeat and his eyes strained for the light as he made his way toward it with agonizing sluggishness.

He emerged in another, much larger room with as many tables and chairs as would have been required for some type of eating establishment. There was a bar which was gathering dust, a small stage where musicians had once performed and played their hearts out, swinging doors that led to what must have been the kitchen, and a generous vestibule at the far end where the patrons had been welcomed and then escorted to their seats.

The young man started for what he foggily thought was the front entrance, but just then the swinging doors burst open when he was just in a few feet of them. He was suddenly face to face with a man he did not recognize, who had skin so pale it was gray, and whose gleaming, dark eyes had the look of a predator. Of all things, over his dark suit he was wearing an opera cape which was pulled back until all of its crimson underside was exposed.

"Zaht, you twit, your food is burning—!" he began, but then narrowed his eyes as he realized his mistake.

For just a second, he looked as surprised as Link did, but then he struck out with a meaty fist and caught the young man firmly on the chin. Link, who had been much too slow to react, went down, because he couldn't remain standing after the blow, and because it seemed much safer on the floor. Though he felt the yawning blackness of unconsciousness drawing at him, he managed to hang onto reality with a grip that was rapidly slipping. He closed his eyes and lay still, both as a chance to catch his breath and to see that the other man might just let his guard down.

The gangster, for he was surely one of them, moved around Link and muttered something under his breath. However, before he could decide what he would do next, he heard the sound of someone else storming into the place. He strode away from the sprawled form of the prisoner while he went to see who was coming. It was Dorffman, whose teeth were gnashed together and who was red in the face. Behind him was a sour-faced Vlaatin with folded arms, and Daupple and Griham were at his heels.

"Boss!" exclaimed the crook in the inverted cape. "The prisoner escaped!" He gestured back toward Link.

"Of course he did, Aghamn, you idiot! He took my piece!" Dorffman snarled, gripping the other man's coat and then shoving him away.

"Did you kill him?" questioned Vlaatin.

"I just hit him," Aghamn replied with something of a growl. "He went down like a ninepin. Hah! What a lily-livered, yellowed-streaked weakling!"

The gangsters passed through the largest part of the place, where all the many tables and chairs had been pushed aside to make more room. They were just approaching Link and were within some ten feet of him when he rose to one elbow and pointed Zaht's snub-nosed revolver at Dorffman, who was in the middle of the group of crooks. He'd been biding his time and trying to get enough breath back so his head would stop spinning, but he knew he couldn't wait any longer and slipped his hand into his outer pocket where he'd put his most recently acquired gun. The deep ache in his ribs renewed itself as he moved, but if he hadn't he would be like a hapless bird sitting before them.

"Put…your hands up…" he gasped, and even he realized how weak and ineffectual his voice sounded. He could only hope that the sight of the gun barrel pointed at them would be far more expressive than any words.

"You no-good, lousy, son of—" Griham shouted as he stood rooted on the spot.

Dorffman beheld the young man with coldly calculating eyes, an equally nasty smile slowly taking over his lips. "You're in no shape for a stand-off. You haven't any hope of escape, so you might as well toss that rod over here right now."

"Look at him!" Daupple snorted nervously and without mirth. "His hand is shaking!"

"You better stay back," Link warned them, his voice raspy. "My hands are shaking…and there's no telling who I'd shoot first. So get back…all of you!" He made a motion with the revolver. "…And get your hands up."

The possible prospect of being ventilated did not appeal to any of the crooks, and they obeyed by raising their hands to some degree or another. None of them had quite enough courage, or stupidity, to try anything…yet. Their eyes were aflame with rage and hate, and Dorffman's olive face was darker still with the color of spoiled plums. His great pride had just received a tremendous blow, and he was at a disadvantage because he was without his precious gun.

Link struggled to find his way out of what seemed a frightful dream. His body did not want to obey all the things he wanted to do; he wasn't sure he could rise and remain upright, and his hand was already so tired, as if he was holding an anvil aloft instead of the comparatively lightweight firearm. Both his starved, exhausted mind and body cried out to him to close his eyes and let all the world fall away, but if he did, for anything more than a split second, he'd likely be dead at the hands of the crooks.

He tried to think of a way out, but the gangsters were between him and the door. Even if he could gain the outside, how would he make his escape good? He might be able to get as far as the sidewalk but his spaghetti legs wouldn't support him a further distance, that was certain. And how could he prevent them from following him? If the unused restaurant was the abandoned building it seemed to be, then it was probably in a part of town that wasn't much frequented and he couldn't count on seeing a taxi cruise by. Oh, if only his thoughts weren't such a jumbled mess, like a hundred cat's cradles gone wrong!

"How long do you think you can hold out?" asked Dorffman, his deep tone like sandpaper on Link's nerves.

"Get back! Get back, all of you!" the young man commanded, attempting to put some strength and forcefulness behind his words. He was largely unsuccessful, and also sounded quite hoarse.

"You can barely hold that heater up, I can tell," the big man continued, a nasty sort of smile slowly creeping to his lips again. "You don't have a chance of getting past us. You put that thing down now and we'll take care of you, bring you food, whatever you want." He slid one foot slightly forward and then leaned further upon it.

"No, no, no…" muttered Link in something of an agony. He waved the gun dizzily, carelessly between the five crooks before him. "Don't come any closer!"

"Boss, what are you doing?!" hissed Daupple out of the side of his mouth. "D'you want to get us killed?"

"He's not going to shoot us," the big man replied and turned back to face their escaped prisoner. "You're not the sort of kid to help us. I don't think you have the guts to knock anyone off, or do you?"

"Don't…try it," cautioned Link, both his vision and his hand wavering.

Some of the men were starting to buy their leader's clever-sounding words, but not all. Vlaatin and Aghamn weren't yet ready to take their boss at his word; they knew that even the best of men could do something drastic and unexpected in an intense situation. On the other hand, Daupple and Griham found false courage in his big talk and they tried to crept a little closer; Daupple was thinking that if he could get to his shiv, he was sure he could throw it at Link without missing. Dorffman, in the meantime, stood as he was. If anyone did get cooled off, he was just fine with it being any of his underlings and not himself.

"I said…get back!"

A small explosion erupted from the piece he held. His hand jerked at the last second, and his aim was already off, thus the bullet went tearing harmlessly into the ceiling, its trajectory angling diagonally up from the floor. He hadn't quite meant to pull the trigger, but he was panicked and desperate to keep them away from him. He had to get out! He couldn't let them put him back in that room that he'd thought would be the last thing he'd ever see! But even he didn't think he could just kill the five gangsters, even if he had five hundred bullets instead of the five in the revolver. The exit was just yonder, but it might have been hundreds of miles away for all the good it did him!

He thought he was dreaming again, for suddenly the front entrance burst with men who all held guns of varying sizes. There were several voices lifting into the air, both of the newcomers and the crooks, but most strident of all was the one that commanded, "Hands up! Get those hands where we can see them!" More bodies in blue spilled into the room from the other exits, surrounding Link and the gangsters. More steady hands leveled firearms at the crooks, leaving no escape for any of them.

"Drop the gun, you!" came a startlingly loud voice just behind Link.

He needed no prompting, as the snub-nosed thirty-eight was already slipping from his fingers. A pair of feet kicked it away, where it was out of reach and could later be picked up carefully to avoid smudging prints. He watched with disbelieving eyes as the men in blue cuffed the crooks, searched them, and removed their personal arsenals. They, who had kept him prisoner, were the captives now! He wanted to laugh but the only sound that escaped his throat was a groan.

Someone came up to him and crouched beside him, breaking through the fog that seemed to surround him. He lifted his head and glanced at the man, his heart almost stopping when he glimpsed the red hair and brows. Link thought he was Dorffman, come back to torture him with tempting words. His eyes wide and not quite focused, he tried to back away.

~O~

The street was eerily quiet, except for the sound of a shot just after the police had gone into the building. It was slightly muffled and could have as easily been the result of a backfire. Zelda sat bolt upright, clutching at her father's arm with one hand and the side of the seat with the other. She knew the sound was of a gun being fired and her breath constricted in her throat, nearly making her lightheaded before she remembered to suck in another lungful of air.

Several moments of silence passed. They heard some faint shouting from within the building, but then everything seemed to go quiet again. The falling snow only served to deaden any slight noises that might barely have reached them otherwise. Zelda kept stilling her breath and holding herself nearly immobile as she strained to hear something, anything!

"What's happening in there?!" she whispered, her eyes seemingly attached to the entrance of the abandoned building.

Her father had no way of knowing and could not tell her. He patted her hand and absently ran his gloved fingers through his beard.

After a few more minutes in which each second dragged its feet like a century, she couldn't stand it anymore. Her heart was in her throat and the only thought in her mind was of her friend as she pushed the car door open and climbed quickly out. She hastened across the street as quickly as the accumulation of snow would safely allow, hardly hearing her father's remonstrations to come back. As she stepped up on the opposing sidewalk, she almost slipped and caught hold of a lamppost to steady herself.

Then, just as she was approaching the building, some of the policemen came out with the men they'd arrested. She stopped in her tracks as she spotted a man who looked a bit like Link. She knew immediately that he was not her friend, and she suddenly understood the supposed sightings of Link in the last two weeks. All of the crooks were irate to be handcuffed and hauled away, each protesting or threatening in his own way.

Just before she passed them, she heard one of the policemen say, "…and you're wanted for arson, among other things. I suppose you don't know anything about that either, do you? Come on with ye now!"

She was beyond them then, and heard nothing more. She passed through the open doorway and into the vestibule, her heart in her throat. She heard—or sensed, whichever it was—her father's heavy steps behind her, but she didn't slow her own pace or wait for him. The police had caught the gangsters, but what about Link? Was he really in there, as the shifty Howgendoogen seemed to think? She couldn't wait. She had to _know_!

~O~

Link couldn't stop trembling, from the cold, from fear that still held him in its unyielding grip, and from sheer exhaustion. But then he saw Dorffman being led away and his mind slowly told him that the other redhead was someone else… and that the man was speaking to him.

"You're Wolfspaw, I take it?"

"…Yeah," he replied, and grimaced when he tried to gulp a lungful of cold air.

"I'm Detective Zauz," the man told him, and he eyed the sub-nosed thirty-eight that one of the officers was picking up with a pencil. "Do you have any more weapons?"

Link fumbled with his topcoat and the many layers underneath. Seeing his trouble, Zauz reached over and helped him, relieving him of Zaht's knives and Dorffman's big forty-five. The detective stood and handed them off to another policeman. Then, before Zauz could bend over him again, the young man saw something that seemed quite out of place just after a raid and with policemen swarming all over. What he saw was the legs of a woman, between her fur-topped boots and the hem of her skirt. He looked up a little bit more and with bleary eyes he glimpsed her face.

Zelda saw him and froze for just a moment. "Link! Oh, Link!" she cried.

She rushed forward and knelt beside him. She knew she was crying but she didn't care. Here he was, alive and breathing and frowning confusedly up at her, as if he didn't understand how she came to be there. He was the most beautiful sight in the whole of Hyrule, no, the whole world! She suddenly wanted to kiss him and she didn't stop to think twice about it. She threw her arms around his neck, her pink lips grazing the side of his mouth and landing mostly on his stubbly cheek. She pulled back and stared unabashedly at him.

His chest heaved with each lungful of air. He couldn't get enough of it and yet it pained him so. "Zelda…? What… what are you doing here…?"

"Why, I came to find you, of course! Though I had some help." She glanced up at Zauz and the members of the group who were gathering a bit closer. "Quite a lot of it, in fact."

Everything felt like a dream. Her warmth seemed to tickle his very soul, but he wasn't quite sure how real it was. She had her hand on his shoulder, and then moved down his arm until she reached his fingers. He was just faintly aware of some other people hovering over him, but he was much too tired to try and figure out who they were. He glimpsed Gustaf behind Zelda, the businessman's hand upon her shoulder. Link remembered his talk with her father that one night after dinner and he suddenly thought that he shouldn't be holding her hand. He tried to push her fingers away, but her healthy grip was too much for him.

Zauz crouched at the young man's side again, giving him eye contact. "Cripes, am I glad we found you. Your girl here wouldn't give me any peace while you were missing. Now I can forget about this case and go back to the others!" He sounded grumpy and was as sour faced as ever, but there was a kind of gladness around his eyes and a sudden looseness about his mouth.

Link's gaze was on the detective momentarily before he drifted back to Zelda. She was staring at him like she was starving for sight of him and her hunger was only beginning to be sated. He was still supporting himself by his elbows, but she sat on the cold floor and gripped his chilly fingers between her own. Her cheeks were wet and he slowly realized she'd been crying, or perhaps she still was. His heart constricted and he wanted to tell her she shouldn't weep over him, but oh, how his head swam!

"You don't look too good. Are you all right, fella?" came a voice from above. Zelda didn't look up, but she recognized it as belonging to Ashei.

At those words, Zelda suddenly realized, with a sharp intake of breath, that he didn't look well at all. He was very pale, his cheeks were sunken, his whole face gaunt, he was frightfully thin, and she could just about see every heartbeat in his neck, every swallow he took. There were a couple of bruises on one cheekbone and around an eye, and there might have been more on his jaw, which was covered with two weeks' worth of whiskers. His lip was split and swollen, with a trickle of blood running partway down his chin. His eyebrows were scrunched, his whole expression a pained grimace. His eyes had a faraway look in them and though he tried to focus on her, he seemed to have some difficulty in so doing.

"Link…" she murmured as more tears fell.

"I think… I'll be fine…now."

Zauz didn't believe him for a second. He cleared his throat. "You don't much look like you're able to come down to the station."

"But why?" Zelda cried, clutching all the more at Link's hand as she snapped her gaze to the detective. "Why do you want to drag him down there? He hasn't done any of those things! It must have been those other men!"

"We still have to clear up this whole mess. I have a report to fill out, you know. If he's done nothing wrong then you have nothing to fear." Though he knew that would hardly satisfy the young lady, Zauz eyed Link again. "But first, you need a doctor. Can you get up?"

"S-sure I can…"

He rose to a sitting position and then to his knees. Zelda and the others noticed how slowly he moved and how he trembled and shook as he did. He stumbled to his feet and swayed there for a moment, his head spinning worse than ever with the blood rushing to his brain. She caught at his arm and her lips were moving with his name. He didn't hear her, however, and the floor came up to meet him. He fainted.

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_ Hoiger Howgendoogen is an actual Zelda character._

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01-15-2020 ~ Published (7,096 words)


	15. Christmas At Last

_Thank you all for continuing to read, and especially to those of you who take an extra moment to leave feedback for me. It's really wonderful to read those and I appreciate it so much! Thank you!_

_I thought things were going to calm down this month, but it hasn't happened so far, what with household duties, snow removal, all the little odds and ends that seem to take so much time... But through it all, somehow, I managed to finish this tale. So now I present to you this last chapter, which really is the longest one. _

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**Keeping Hope for Christmas - by Pseudo Twili**

Chapter 15: Christmas At Last

Link slowly became aware of light seeping through his eyelids. He wanted to sink back into the blackness and oblivion of unconsciousness, but it remained elusively beyond his grasp. He also gradually became aware of the faint ache that flexed with every breath he drew, of the weary discomfort of nearly every muscle of his body, and of a weight that pressed over him. His mind struggled with the reason for all those sensations, and with his further awakening he remembered. He tensed and his eyes flew open.

He had no clear notion of where he was or what had happened to him. He rather expected that he was still imprisoned in that room, yet the clean white walls which met his gaze were unlike the grungy gray of which he'd seen nothing else the last two weeks. He was in a bed, he realized, and not on the lumpy, moth-eaten thing that the crooks had dragged in and dumped him on. He was also covered with several blankets, which accounted for the weight and for the fact that he didn't feel quite as cold.

He realized all this within the space of a second or two, when something else caught his attention. There was a pressure on his hand. He swiveled his gaze and spotted Zelda, seated in a chair at his bedside and leaning forward slightly as she grasped his hand between both of hers. Her eyes were wet, and yet within them was a deep gladness that spilled out and seemed to light her whole face. She'd had a puckered little frown, but she lost it when she looked at him.

"Oh, Link! I'm so glad you're awake!" she exclaimed quietly. She squeezed his fingers a bit more firmly as a tear slipped from her turquoise eye. "How are you feeling?"

She'd been distraught with anxiety the day before when he'd collapsed. Her relief that they'd found him vied with a new terror that he'd be taken from her yet again, this time by death. She hadn't left him out of her sight while Auru and Zauz carried him out to the car. She sat in the backseat with him, clutching at his cold, limp hand while her father drove them to the nearest hospital. Even there she couldn't sit still and paced in the waiting room and hallway while the doctor and nurses worked on Link. She felt as though she could finally breathe again only when the kindly smiling nurse came out and told her that, with the proper treatment, the young man would be all right. Then she'd wept and clung to her father.

They allowed her to go in and see Link and she contented herself in watching him sleep. She didn't want to leave his side and might have spent the whole night there, but the same nurse came back and told her that he wouldn't awaken until morning anyway. She offered Zelda a cot in the nurses' quarters, which the young lady eventually accepted. Her father had returned home when he saw that she would not be budged. She had already called Aryll, but she made him promise to reassure the other girl that Link was in good hands and was resting. Then she slept for a few hours in the borrowed cot, but she rose before the sun and returned to Link's side.

"Zelda…" he breathed. He was never so glad to see anyone in his life, and for just a few seconds his heart swelled. Then a cold fear went through him and his heartbeat quickened as he tried to raise himself to get a better look at his surroundings. "…What is this? Where…where am I?"

She stood up and leaned over him, making sure she was within his line of sight. "Link, it's all right! You're in the hospital. It's all right."

"Hospital? How…?" he rasped, and found that he hadn't the strength to remain upright and sank back into the pillow.

She sat on the side of the bed and queried, "Don't you remember last night, Link? You were in that place… We came and found you… and then you passed out and we brought you here."

"I…thought it was all a dream…" he mumbled, and closed his eyes. A moment later he opened them again and peered wearily at her. "What day is it?"

"It's the twenty-sixth, Link."

His faced seemed to crumple a bit. "I… I missed it…"

"Do you mean Christmas?" she asked as she pulled at his hand. "Yesterday was Christmas Day, yes, but it's only the beginning of the season. You didn't miss so much, really. You're here now, so that's all that matters. We have twelve more days of Christmas and all that beyond, starting right now." Her voice caught on the beginnings of a sob and new tears pricked at her eyes. "Oh, Link… I was so worried about you! You disappeared and I didn't know what to do. I'm so glad we found you!"

He met her gaze, his own eyes weary and with dark shadows beneath them. "I'm sorry…" he whispered.

"It wasn't your fault! It was those horrid gangsters, not you!" she declared, her eyes alight with turquoise fire. Then she was as soft as butter on warm toast. "…I couldn't stop thinking about you, Link. Aryll and I were both lost without you."

He tried to lift himself up again, an anxious, tortured look twisting his already gaunt features. "Aryll? …Is she all right?! Where is she…?"

Zelda disengaged her fingers from his and pushed on his shoulders ever so gently. "She's fine, Link. It's all right. She's at my house and she's been there with me and my family ever since that first day. She'll probably be here during visiting hours, if not sooner. Lie back now. You need all the rest you can get, the doctor said so."

He allowed himself to fall back, and even then his vision swam. He closed his eyes and just tried to concentrate on breathing evenly so that it wouldn't add to that slight ache of his ribs.

"After we brought you here yesterday, the doctor gave you something to make you sleep, and to help with the pain. He says you're going to have to take it easy for a while and not to overdo it. He…" She paused and swallowed, trying to maintain some semblance of composure. Her voice became smaller and she clenched at his hand. "…He said that if you'd been under those harsh conditions much longer…you might not have made it. He…he said it's a lucky thing you are Hylian and have such a robust constitution."

His eyelids were heavier than before, but still he opened them and looked upon her again. His heart gave a painful twist and he frowned. He tried to move his other hand toward her, but it seemed to be tangled or lost beneath the many blankets covering him and he gave up when his strength failed him.

"Don't cry…" he murmured. "I think I'm going to be all right."

"Oh, it's not that, Link! These aren't tears of sorrow. Not really. I'm just so glad to see you! I'm happy that you will be all right. I'm glad you're back…and…and that we're together again." She squeezed his hand.

"Zelda, do you have something I can eat…? I don't think I can feel my stomach anymore…"

She almost laughed with the absurdity of his timing. She smiled wanly even though her tears. "Oh, no Link. The doctor said you mustn't have anything solid right away. He says you must take it slowly, otherwise you could get very sick. They gave you some vitamins and fluids earlier," she explained, gesturing to the other side of the bed and a stand with a long clear tube hanging from it. "Oh, and how could I forget?!" She reached to the nightstand on her side of his bed and handed him a glass. "The nurse said I should get you to drink some of this when you were awake."

He eyed it as if he expected it to sprout fangs and strike him.

"It's just water with glucose and vitamins and…what did she call them? Oh yes, electrolytes. I guess they're something new. I've never heard of them before, but the doctor said they are vital for the proper functioning of our bodies."

She helped him to prop himself up on the pillow so he could take some sips of the vessel's contents. His hand shook as he lifted it and she hovered very close by as she was afraid he would drop it, but he didn't. She took the glass, set it back on the little bedside table and grasped his fingers again.

"How do you feel, Link? Really now."

He groaned and scowled feebly. "…I'm as weak as a baby mouse, I ache all over, and it hurts to breathe, but not as bad as before, I guess. I liked it better when I was asleep."

She wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry at being able to hear his sour words again. "The doctor said you have a couple broken ribs and you'll just have to let them heal with time. He wants to keep you here for a day to make sure you don't develop pneumonia." She shivered a bit at the thought, but pushed it away quickly, telling herself that it wouldn't happen. "As soon as you can leave, we're taking you to my house. We didn't finish opening the gifts yesterday, and we all want you to be there. Father was relieved when we found you, and I know Mother must be as well. Oh, and Joel and Zill will be so glad to see you too! They didn't do a good job of hiding it, so I knew they missed you."

"I bet they missed running into me…" he muttered drowsily, his eyelids giving up the fight of staying open.

"And I can't believe those men had the gall to kidnap you like that! The police have them all in jail now, though, and I hope the judge throws the book at them! Detective Zauz was wrong about you, just like I told him all along. I knew you wouldn't do any of those things those men tried to frame you for. Some of the houses in our neighborhood were broken into, but it was mostly ones that were empty for the time being. I'm so glad to have you back, Link! When you get out of here you're coming home with me."

She paused to take a breath when she realized his own inhalations had become gentler and more even. She smiled as she looked down on him and watched him sleep, a few more tears slipping down her cheeks. Then she leaned forward, kissed him softly, and returned to her chair.

Link awakened again later that morning. He stirred and made some sounds, but hardly had he cracked open his eyes and his vision was all but filled with a girlish face and a cloud of golden waves. His heart gave a little leap, which wasn't quite the same as what he'd felt when he saw Zelda, and his hand trembled as he reached out to touch her arm.

"Link! Oh Link! I can hardly believe you're back with us. But it's not a dream and I'm so glad!"

"Arrie…" he whispered.

With tears shining in her eyes and on her cheeks, she leaned forward quickly and made her best attempt to hug him.

A second later he exclaimed, "Ow!" and jolted under her touch.

"What is it? What did I do?" she queried tremulously, drawing back gingerly.

He gasped and narrowly missed biting his tongue. "It's… it's all right. It's just my ribs, that's…all."

"Oh Link…" she sobbed. "I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you! Zelda told me…and I forgot."

"…You're getting the blanket all wet," he grumbled, but his tone betrayed nothing but the tenderness he felt for her.

"Of course I am. It's because I'm crying," she retorted back.

All the same, she carefully dabbed at her face with her hanky and then mopped her eyes. She reached for his hand and grasped it between her gloved ones while a few more rebellious tears trickled down her cheeks despite her resolve to keep them back. He shivered and didn't resist her touch.

"Are you sure you're warm enough, Link?"

"I don't know… but I didn't think I'd ever be warm again," he replied with another shudder.

She moved his arm back under the blankets until just his fingers were exposed. "That's another thing she told me: the doctor said we need to keep you as warm as we can while you get your strength back."

He'd already glanced around the room and noticed with a sigh that he was alone with his sister. "Where is Zelda?" He thought perhaps that she'd returned to her home and he wasn't sure how to feel about that. He liked her company very much and he felt more complete when she was there, but on the other hand he also didn't like her to see him in such a sad state.

"She went to find something to eat. She's just downstairs in the cafeteria, I think, unless she decided to go out and get something else. Oh, which reminds me… Here."

Aryll grabbed the glass from the bedside table and proffered it to him. He grumbled faintly under his breath, but he accepted it anyway and took some sips from it. After giving it back to her, he tucked his hand under the blankets again and closed his eyes while he tried not to breathe too deeply. The bruises received at the hands of the gangsters still hurt, though considerably dulled by the medicine he'd been given earlier, and all his muscles felt like jelly and seemed just as useful. He wanted just to sleep again but he couldn't yet, especially when he heard a sniffle from his sister. He cracked his eyes open again and once he could focus on her he saw that she was gazing upon him with such softness, such an earnest expression on her face. Tears were sliding down her cheeks.

"Hey now… don't cry…please," he rasped.

She sniffled. "Oh, Link! Haven't you learned by now that we females need to cry sometimes? You don't have to understand it, but just let me cry, hold my hand and you can hug me when your ribs aren't broken."

Staring at her for a few long moments, he didn't say anything at first but he gave her fingers a rather feeble squeeze. "…I still don't like to see you cry."

"Well, I suppose that's all right, just as long as you understand why."

"Does Zelda feel that way too…?"

Aryll nodded. "Of course. Most females are that way, I think. Though I guess sometimes there are those whose tears aren't genuine and who try to use them as a device to get something from other people. You have to be careful of those women."

He raised one tired brow. "And how do you know so much about it?"

"I told you about Orielle, one of my friends from Tarrey Town, right? Well, she had an older cousin who was always manipulating everyone around her into doing what she wanted. One of the things she used were tears. I only met the cousin once and I didn't like her. I heard from Orielle that her cousin's husband left her because he finally found out what she was doing behind his back."

One side of his mouth quirked upward in what could not quite be considered a smile. "You're a smart one, sis."

She managed a little smile even through her tears. "Thanks, big brother, I guess maybe I am." Then she pursed her lips and stared at him, hard. "I'm also smart enough to know that you need to talk to Zelda. Whatever's been bugging you, you need to get it off your chest before it drives a wedge between you two."

He paled, if that was even possible, and his eyes took on a sort of haunted look. He swallowed thickly and his hands trembled as his heart beat quicker. He suddenly felt lightheaded again. "Wh-wha… Wh-what..?" He knew she was right, but he hadn't a chance to work up his courage yet.

Her expression softened, nearly melting. "Don't wait too long, Link… when you're feeling stronger, anyway. She's been desperate without you… we both were. She always told me to keep hope, that you were alive and…would return to us, somehow, some way. The police couldn't find you and she got it into her head to look for you herself. Oh, we didn't find anything really useful, but we talked to people who know you. Thanks to her efforts, we met this group of Mr. Shad's friends who help people in trouble. Did she tell you about them yet? They're the ones who found out where you were."

"You were really worried too…weren't you Aryll? I'm…I'm sorry…"

She dipped her head and more dewy tears squeezed out between her lashes and trickled down her cheeks. "I was so worried and afraid. We didn't know what had happened to you! I would have been alone except Zelda brought me to her home. That's where I've been staying all this time, you know."

Her brother nodded slightly, never taking his eyes from her. "Yes, she told me…" he murmured. "I'm…glad you weren't alone."

Aryll brightened a bit and her tone took and upward tilt. "Oh, and you know what else happened? Yesterday my parents came to the city. I didn't think I'd be able to see them, what with all the snowstorms and bad roads. Wasn't that a wonderful Christmas surprise?" She squeezed his hand.

"Sure…" he mumbled, and despite how tired he was, he almost smiled himself at seeing her so happy.

"It was splendid! Almost like last Christmas' surprise when I saw you again. But, oh! I think I'm even happier to see you right now, Link!"

He pressed his lips together and let his eyelids fall. He wanted to tell her how glad he was to see her too, but he was afraid he would break down if he so much as opened his mouth. He couldn't do that; it would hurt too much.

"Do I hear voices?" said a young woman who had her head stuck through an appropriately sized gap in the door. "Oh, you're awake again!"

Aryll twisted her head around to see her, and Link lifted himself just slightly as Zelda let herself the rest of the way into the room. Her feet ate up the distance between the door and the bed in several strides. She perched on the side which was not already taken by the younger girl, and she gazed down into Link's blue eyes with her own turquoise ones shimmering with gladness and unshed tears.

"What were you talking about?" she asked.

When she opened her mouth, Link thought he smelled potato salad and cheese, and possibly something else he couldn't distinguish, though perhaps he was going crazy. For some reason, his mouth was watering.

Aryll filled her in the latest thing she'd said, and from there both young ladies kept up a string of conversation, telling Link about everything that had happened while he was missing, such as Joel and Zill's escapades, the burglaries, and about the group. He was grateful for their chatter, more of which was Zelda's, and he tried to pay attention to it all, but after a while his mind wandered further and further away. He couldn't forget what his sister had told him and it just seemed to add to the deep ache in his chest.

Their words faded when they realized his eyes were nearly closed again. Zelda gave him the glass of sweet water, of which he took a few more sips, and then they let him rest. Before long he was asleep again.

The next thing he knew, the sky outside was dark and bedside light was angled toward Zelda, illuminating her nutty brown tresses and making them shine. She sat in her chair, leaning over something in her lap, but she seemed to sense movement, glanced upward and noticed his open eyes. She set something—a book, Link supposed—on the table, rose from her seat and settled on the edge of the bed again. She gave him more of the glucose-infused water and continued to do so at regular intervals while he was awake.

"How are you feeling, Link?"

"Tired," he replied, his tone bearing a testy edge.

Clasping his hand, she said, "Detective Zauz was here. Those horrible men who held you prisoner are all in jail and are facing charges of kidnapping, burglary and so on. Turns out they're wanted in some other cities for the crimes they've pulled off. And that one who looks a bit like you… what's-his-name… he's wanted for setting a fire at an orphanage that destroyed a lot of their records. Is it the same one you were at?"

"Probably. I don't know that Daupple was in any others."

She wrinkled her nose and made a face. "He may bear some resemblance to you, but the moment I saw him I knew he wasn't you. He doesn't look so much like you, I think. He has such a mean, sneering sort of face, nothing at all like you."

He cocked one weary eyebrow toward her, but didn't know what to say to her in reply.

"Anyway, the detective wants you to come down to the station once you're out of here. He told me they figured out what happened and they know you didn't commit any of those crimes. He said you need to make a statement though, and you'll have to be a witness at the trial later, I suppose. I asked him if he could just wait until you're feeling better, but he was insistent."

Link released a breath slowly, so as not to aggravate his ribs. "I don't mind. I'll be glad to do it and nail them…the filthy scum!"

She clutched tighter to her hand as she took in his scrunched eyebrows and the grimace of both anger and discomfort. He shifted on the bed and bit his lip as he did so.

"I'd like nothing more than to get out of here," he declared, but when he tried to rise up, he was disappointed at how weak he still felt.

"You'll have to ask the doctor, Link. And don't you dare think of trying to leave on your own either. I'll camp out in here if you so much as think about leaving without me!"

He stared at her for a moment and then his expression gentled. "…I won't."

Silence bloomed like weeds before them. Zelda gazed down at her hand, and her fingers which were entwined with his. It seemed as though she was always the one to get closer to him, to take his hand or his arm and hold it against her own. Even if he didn't shrug away from her touch, he never seemed to initiate it himself and she found herself wishing he would. She wanted to ask him about what had been eating at him, to impress upon him the feelings that had been building up within her, but her tongue stilled before she could say anything. She was so entrenched with her own thoughts that she didn't notice the deep furrow of Link's brow as he also wrestled with himself.

He shuddered. "This can't be real…it can't be…" He trembled as he said it. "Pinch me, Zelda. I… keep thinking this is all a dream…"

Instead she used her other hand to grasp his all the firmer between both of hers. "…Does this feel real to you?"

"Zelda… I…"

"Yes, Link?" she replied softly, capturing his gaze with her own and holding it unwaveringly.

Still shaking, he averted his eyes and bit at his lip. Then he lifted his face toward her again and struck out like a blind man suddenly dropped in the middle of nowhere. "When I was locked up, I thought about you a lot and… I was afraid I'd never see you again." He pressed his lips together and swallowed something in his throat. His eyes were moist.

Her heart did a crazy flip, worse than her stomach had when she'd been heckled by her brothers to go on a crazy roller coaster ride. She choked on a little gasp of her own and she clutched at his hand as if it was the only thing keeping her from sinking into a sea of grief, misery and despair. She kept silent and waited for him to finish.

"…I wanted to tell you so many things… and I thought I never would… But now, if I'm not dreaming, then you're really here…"

"Yes, I'm here," she said, her voice hardly above a whisper.

He looked quite stricken, his breaths coming in painful gasps and the sound of his heartbeat echoing in his ears. He stumbled over his words and felt an utter fool, but he wouldn't stop. He'd lain upon the mattress in that basement room too many times, thinking yearningly of her and wishing he had just two minutes to tell her what she meant to him. He'd promised himself that if he somehow managed to get out of there alive and did see her again, he wouldn't waste the opportunity. He didn't imagine it to be quite so difficult, however, nor that his head would pound and his insides to feel like they were bumping around in a boneless body.

"Zelda…I-I care so much for you…" There. He'd said it. It was as if he'd been carrying a tremendous weight on his shoulders and now it had fallen from him like a snake shedding its skin.

Her smile grew and grew until it enveloped her eyes, her lips, her cheeks, her whole face. Tears slipped down the sides of her nose, completely unnoticed in her relief and delight. Her heart was suddenly trying to take flight.

"I know," she said simply.

Progressing still further wasn't quite so hard after that, and seeing the joy in her face gave him more courage. "…I think I must have loved you since we first met…only I didn't know it then."

"You never told me," she murmured, but her tone was only slightly chiding.

He bit at his lip. "I was afraid… I am afraid… that I would only hurt you. I…I couldn't do that, not for the world! …But I am still afraid"

She lifted one hand to touch his gaunt cheek, while she still held his fingers in the grip of her other. Unable to keep her tongue still any longer, she burst out, "I am not afraid. I know you, Link. You are the sweetest, gentlest, most admirable man I could ever know! I think you would make a devoted husband and an even more wonderful father. Children must have an innate sense about people. I've seen the way you are around children, especially Zill and Joel. They idolize you! And that little girl, Saria, admires you so. She has a crush on you, did you know? I think that no one like that could possibly be a bad father. You must be worried because you were shifted around so much, right? Because of that horrible man you escaped from?"

He inhaled too quickly, causing him to cough and the pain to flare up in his ribs. Once he had recovered sufficiently, he rasped, "How… how did you know?" His face, which had already been quite pale, looked completely bloodless.

"You told me," she replied, her eyebrows dipping worriedly. Then she reached for the book she'd set on the table, holding the ledger up so he could see. "The police found it in the room you were in, and Detective Zauz let me have it. Link…"

Feeling the sharp burning of shame, worse even than the ache in his chest, he closed his eyes and turned his head away. Oh, why had she read it?! Now she knew everything! He frowned weakly to himself and kicked himself mentally, over and over again. He was at the edge of cliff and below it was darkness; he seemed to be teetering at the edge, but then Zelda's hand pressed over his and his opened his eyes. She was clasping the book to her chest as if it was a precious thing, and she beheld him with such a soft, tender look that made him want to protect her.

"I didn't think anyone would ever see it…" he said, his words trailing off.

"And I'm glad I did," she replied, her tone gentle. "I'm glad I read it. I love you, Link. Whatever affects you affects me too."

She could well guess at the reason for his dismay. After all, he had poured his heart and soul into the journal of his captivity. He had bared all his tender and most human thoughts, his darkest secret, his struggles, his hope and despair on those pages. Perhaps he felt he should only receive ridicule for such a thing, but she was so immensely grateful that she could taste it on her tongue. It seemed to her to be bittersweet, for she felt all the closer to him because she knew, but now she also shared his pain.

Her expression eased and her fingers curled softly around his. "It's not all bad, Link. There was one good man in your life. He cared about you. I want to meet him more than ever now!"

He gazed back at her, his own eyes wide and almost unblinking as he nearly lost himself in her turquoise depths. "I-I guess you're right… He was more of a father than anyone else. And he would like you and approve of you, I know he would."

"You're so sweet," she said, unable to keep her lips from curving upward.

"No… I'm not. I'm just telling the truth. You're too good for someone like me."

"Don't say that. You're more wonderful than you think." Then she frowned and shifted her gaze downward. She loosened her hold on the book and let it rest on her lap. "Link, there is… something I must tell you…"

He looked at her with the warm blue eyes that weren't anything like the icy blue she'd seen in her dream. She swallowed, bit at her lip and then in a quiet voice told him about her former fiancé and the experience she'd had. By the time she had finished, Link's tired eyes were alight with the fire of a righteous wrath, his free hand was knotted into a fist, the other one clenched tightly around hers, and he set his mouth into a fierce scowl. He rose up, trembling as he did.

"The filthy scum!" he declared through clenched teeth. "I just wish he was here! I'd… I'd knock his block off!"

Zelda was unsuccessful in keeping the tears back as she relayed her sorry little story, but at his reaction her heart gave a lurch as if she'd jumped off a cliff and suddenly found that she could fly. She wondered for just a moment why she was so grateful that he would be so incensed on her behalf, and then her better sense took over. Her brow wrinkled with some considerable concern as she tried to push him back down, thinking that getting worked up was perhaps detrimental for him in his weakened condition.

"Link, lie back please!" she begged him. "I don't think this is good for you. Oh, maybe I shouldn't have told you!"

He sank back to his pillow again, closed his eyes and inhaled several harsh breaths. "He'd better not ever come near you again, or I'll…I'll knock his daylights out!" he rasped.

He opened his eyes and lifted them to meet hers again, his expression both frightfully fierce and woefully weak. His hand trembled in her grasp and she clung all the tighter to his not quite warm fingers. She'd only wanted to tell him about it because she wanted him to know all the more what he meant to her. His feeling about the whole matter was more vehement than she'd expected and because of it she thought he was such a dear… and also that maybe he was overreacting in typical male fashion.

"You don't have to worry about that," she told him. "I haven't seen him since. For all I know, he's still in Labrynna City."

And suddenly she knew she didn't mind talking about it at all. Her untrue fiancé meant nothing to her now that she had Link. She was elated still further because she knew by testimony of his own lips how much he cared for her. Her own affection swelled within her and spilled from her like a bright light that had abruptly been uncovered. She leaned forward and kissed him quickly.

"Wh-what was that for?" he stammered.

She grinned back at him, the tears not quite dry upon her face. "That's for being you. And because I'm so glad you're here."

He made a hmphing sound low in his throat and she was tempted to roll her eyes. But then she sobered considerably when she turned everything he'd told her over and over in her mind. She understood far better now why he'd been so prickly and pushed her away sometimes, despite the fact that they both enjoyed each other's company. She wished he'd tried to explain to her sooner. She glanced down at her fingers intertwined with his, the latter of which were mostly hidden by the blanket. She'd been so afraid that she'd never see him again that she hardly wanted to let him out of her sight again.

She stared into his deeply blue eyes. Saria had said they were like the summer sky and she was absolutely right. "Link… I know I can be terribly impatient. I've been selfish, thinking of myself and what I wanted from you, without thinking that you had a reason… I wanted our relationship to grow, to deepen because I think it's special to both of us. But if you're not ready yet, then I will wait for you until you are," she said quietly.

He swallowed thickly a couple of times and she could see that his eyes were moist. He returned the squeeze of her hand for a minute before his allowed his much weakened muscles to ease up.

She quickly wiped away a few tears of her own and put on a smile that became more genuine the longer she maintained it. Her eyes shifted to his mouth and jawline. "You know, I feel a little silly for thinking so much about this, but… will you be shaving off your beard?"

His brows lowered and he looked confused, until he lifted a hand to feel his face. Going without shaving for two weeks had left him with long stubble that was itchy, dry and annoying. It was just a couple shades darker than the hair on the rest of his head and was at that stage where it wasn't just mere stubble and wasn't yet an actual beard. He might have shaved during his imprisonment, except for lack of his razor.

"Or are you going to adopt a new look?" she queried further, a mischievous quirk playing about her lips.

Frowning slightly, he replied, "No, I'm not."

He had no intention of keeping it, for it would just be a more physical reminder of the dark time through which he'd passed. When he had enough of his strength back so he could operate a razor without nicking himself in the throat, he would shave it off, or perhaps he would have a barber do it. Good riddance to it! If only he could forget his experience as easily as he could separate himself from two weeks' worth of beard…

"That's just as well," Zelda was saying. "I do believe I like it better when you are clean-shaven, anyhow. Or perhaps that's because I'm used to seeing you thusly…" She shrugged. "No, I think I like seeing more of your face. Not that I have anything against beards, you know. My dad has one, after all. When I was a very little girl I thought everyone could grow a beard. Isn't that silly?!"

As he listened to her chatter, he let his eyes slowly close, but he snapped them open again when all he could see in his mind's eye were the sneering, nastily gleeful faces of his captors, and the basement room where they'd put him. The images plagued him, but the intensity of the memories lessened when he focused on her.

A nurse entered the room as Zelda was telling him about her brothers' various escapades and Navi's departure. Upon seeing that the patient was awake, the petite woman in starched white uniform introduced herself as Ciela. She checked Link's temperature and pulse and asked him how he was feeling.

"Weak as a lamb waiting to be shorn," he responded sourly. "Hungry. And I want to get out of here."

The nurse laughed at his unusual metaphor. "We'll try giving you a bit of broth. You know you have to reintroduce yourself slowly to food, do you? This is very important. Your body has been starved all this time, so you have to allow it to work up to taking in food again. "

He nodded, but his scowl wasn't nearly as intense as he could usually make it, since he simply hadn't the energy to keep it up. He didn't have to tell her anything else, for she could see his listlessness and the twist of pain about his mouth. She finished making notes on his chart, gave both him and Zelda a quick, curious look, and then pressed her lips together and let herself out.

A short while later the doctor came in with the same nurse following him, interrupting yet another rambling tale of Zelda's. Doctor Bandam, as he introduced himself, was a quick-moving man who prodded the patient with impassive swiftness, asked Link a few questions, examined his ribs and other bruises, and requested him to cough, which was something of a painful process. Bandam, who was a researcher by heart, was disgruntled to be doing mundane clinical work, but his excitement was aroused by this case and his desire to prove the efficacy of gradually refeeding a starved patient so as to return him to optimal health.

After questioning Link thoroughly about any symptoms he was feeling and checking him over, the doctor told Ciela to bring him a cup of broth and note the time that she did. Then Bandam reiterated the warning the nurse and Zelda had already told Link, and the man in the white coat swept from the room and on to his next patient.

Hardly able to pay attention to Zelda's words, Link awaited the promised broth with such ravenous anxiousness that he even surprised himself. He almost couldn't believe he would finally get some small amount of the nourishment he craved, even if it was just broth. His ear twitched at every footstep in the hall, and he was sure he could smell something warm and delicious before Ciela even opened the door. Then, when the nurse gave him the mug, he was terribly afraid that it would slip from his trembling fingers.

"Careful, Link," Zelda cautioned him. She was sitting on the side of the bed again and she reached over to steady his hand.

Ciela's eyes were on them, and she murmured something about love being a beautiful thing before she blushed and hurried out again. Meanwhile, Link took sips of the broth and let it slide down his throat to a pitifully, painfully empty stomach. He wanted to gulp the liquid as quickly as he could, but it was a touch too hot and he was forced to be patient. He downed the contents of the mug long before he could ever have been satisfied.

He remained awake for the rest of the evening, listening to Zelda's talk, and all the while she held his hand mostly under the blanket so that he'd stay warm. After evening gave away to night, the nurse and doctor came in again and gave Link some medicine. It dulled the pain and also made him sleepy, so it was only a short time before he began drifting off while his friend still held his hand.

When he awoke many hours later and the morning light was invading the room, she was by his side again. Or perhaps she'd been there all that time…? He didn't know. His brows crinkled as he looked over at her. He was still a bit groggy.

"…Did you sleep at all?"

"Of course I did," she replied, almost too airily. "It wasn't as long as yours, but I must have slept some few hours at least." She cocked her own brows at him. "Now don't you go worrying about me, Link. The most important thing is that you get well. Once we get you home I'm sure nothing will be able to keep me from a good night's sleep again."

Link had a breakfast of very thin gruel and more broth, which left him hungering for more. Then, after more poking and questions, the doctor gave him his release later that morning. Bandam gave them a specific list of exactly what Link should consume for the next week and orders to get plenty of rest, to stay warm, to try and take deeper breaths every once in a while to keep his lungs clear, and to take one of the pills he provided if the pain became too much. Bandam told the patient he wanted to see him again in a few days so he could assess Link's progress.

Zelda made sure he was well bundled against the cold, with a couple of sweaters underneath his topcoat. He was sitting on the side of the bed, feeling a little more alive than he had right before the police had found him, but he was still wondering if he could make it downstairs and into a cab without having his knees buckle under him. But Zelda was already taking his arm and he thought he could make it with her support.

There came a knock on the door and Nurse Ciela and an orderly entered. A second or two later, before the door could close behind them, in stepped Zauz, his hat in his hand. He stood by while Ciela explained that it was hospital policy to give their just-released patients a ride to the door. She gestured to the wheelchair the orderly had brought along.

"I can walk on my own," Link protested with some disdain, as if he hadn't been doubting himself just moments before.

The nurse insisted in her own quietly firm way, Zelda encouraged him to take it easy and accept the ride, and the muscled orderly guided him to the wheeled chair with the kind of forbearance of one used to dealing with fractious patients. Only after that dispute was settled did Zauz open his mouth with the reason for his visit. He wanted Link to come down to the station to make his statement.

"Can't that wait until later?" the young lady interjected before her friend could respond. "He needs to rest!"

Hardly a moment later, Link replied, "I'll come." He set his mouth resolutely, but his hands trembled as he fumbled with them uselessly in his lap.

The detective's expression changed but little. "I have a car waiting downstairs. I'll meet you there," he said, and then he was gone.

While the orderly pushed the wheelchair through the hall and to the elevator, Zelda kept by her friend's side and fretted. "Are you sure, Link? You shouldn't try to do too much, you know. The doctor said you need lots of rest."

"I know," he returned, his tone a bit short because he was feeling mite dizzy and disconcerted. "But it's something I have to do. If I were to wait too long, perhaps Daupple and his pals would find some way to get out of it. I… have to do whatever I can to make sure that doesn't happen."

She had little to say in opposition to his unwavering resolve. She decided she wasn't going to leave his side, however. When they were settled in the squad car, with Zauz and another policeman in the front, she insisted that Link cover himself with the blanket she'd brought along; he complied, but with a grumble under his breath. She held onto his arm as they got out in front of the precinct station, and she was very glad she had done so when he faltered and almost fell as they mounted the steps. Zauz took his other arm and held him in a much firmer grip until they reached his office.

A photographer took a couple of pictures of Link just as he was, stubble and gauntness and all. Then, with a stenographer standing by to take down his words, he told both Zauz and another detective what had happened to him. It took longer than he'd expected, with both men putting to him all manner of inquiries. They wanted to know everything the crooks had said to him, including any reference to their activity. He felt completely worn out and wrung out by the time they were finished questioning him.

The detectives told them that thanks to Telma's information, they'd found the bartender of the Woodfall Tavern, who had been in cahoots with Daupple. With the bartender's confession, the evidence they'd found in the place where Link had been imprisoned, his condition when they found him, the things he'd written in his journal, and the crooks who were spilling their guts, especially when they found out Dorffman was going to leave them behind holding the bag, the police had a fair picture of what exactly had taken place. After a thorough search of the abandoned restaurant that had been the gangster's hideout, they recovered nearly all of the money, jewels and other valuables the crooks had burgled, lifted and otherwise stolen, which amounted to quite the hefty sum.

Then Zauz brought in a couple of witnesses who had seen at least one of the gangsters at the scene of one of their crimes. Both eyewitnesses each scrutinized Link for a moment and shook their heads. The man they'd seen was clean-shaven and looked perfectly healthy. The detectives thanked them for coming and showed them out. By that time, the stenographer had returned with the typed copy of Link's statement, which he signed with a shaky hand.

Zelda rose from her chair on the other side of the room where Zauz had asked her to wait. "Is that all?" she demanded, putting one hand on her hip, while the other rested on the back of Link's chair. She saw the tiredness in her friend's face and in the way he held himself and her only thought was to take him home so he could rest.

"Yes, that will be all for now," Zauz replied as he looked up from whatever he was writing. "Thank you for coming down. Where can we reach you?"

The young lady was pulling at Link's arm and glanced up at the detective momentarily. "He's going to stay with my family for now. You can reach us there," she said, and helped her friend to his feet.

She was relieved when they were outside again, for she'd been a bit apprehensive that the police would suspect Link for things she knew he hadn't done, and that they'd want to lock him up. She held onto his arm even when they were in a cab and she'd covered his legs with the blanket again. He didn't say anything but merely leaned his head back against the seat and closed his eyes as though the lids were too heavy to hold up anymore. He shivered again and she wished she'd brought another blanket.

Almost everyone was at the house to greet them. Techer opened the door for them and he hurried forward to take the arm of the stumbling, drooping young man. Aryll was there just seconds later, bouncing between gladness that he was there again, and renewed concern over his condition. Joel and Zill had known something was up and easily escaped from Honey while she was telephoning her boyfriend for the eighth time. They peeked over the top of the bannisters, took one look at Link and bounded down the stairs toward him, hollering with glee. They might have run into him, too, but both young ladies stopped them before they could.

"Gee, you have a beard!" cried Zill in too loud a tone.

"I can't wait until I can grow a beard!" Joel declared, feeling his own chin.

Giselda entered the scene and added her own welcome. She pulled her boys aside just a moment later as she noticed Link's weary appearance. She marched them upstairs to their room again, scolding them and telling them that the young man needed quiet and rest.

Zelda and Aryll wasted no time in ushering him up to one of the guest rooms; it was actually the same one in which he'd stayed for a few days the previous Christmas, until he'd gotten back on his feet again. He hardly said two words as the girls took him in and left him sitting on the side of the bed, with Techer there to help him. Just minutes later, Link was beneath the blankets and he still felt cold. Both his sister and his friend came in to check on him, but he was already half asleep.

For the next few days he rested. Aryll and Zelda both hovered over him like anxious mothers, but he only complained a little under their ministrations. They made sure he ate and drank just what Doctor Bandam had ordered, and they spent much of their time with him. Zelda amused him with all her retellings of what had gone on while he wasn't around, Aryll brought books from the library and read to him, and they played games together. Even the boys came in and wanted to play; their two favorite games were war and slapjack. Link didn't even mention gin rummy.

Sometimes he got to be very quiet and restless, as if he couldn't stand being cooped up all the time. He would rise suddenly from the bed or one of the big chairs, go to the window and stare out for an hour or more, looking out at the wide open world as if he couldn't get enough of it. When Zelda saw him like that, her heart twisted and she wished she could help him, could understand better what he was going through. She figured he was reliving the terrible memories of being confined and having no escape. She held his hand, but she wished she could do something more for him.

One day she knocked on his door and received no answer. She entered slowly, calling his name. On one arm she bore a tray with the soup and crackers he was supposed to eat next, but she set it on the nearest table when she saw him hunched over in one of the armchairs near the fire. He was shivering and trembling, despite the warmth of the flames, the blanket half askew on his lap, and the layers of clothing he wore. She immediately hastened to his side and grabbed his hand.

"What's wrong, Link? What is it?"

His eyes seemed an even deeper blue because they were filled with tears that slowly trickled down his face. His heartbeat seemed to jump in his throat and his breaths left harsh sounds in her ears. His body was as taut and tense as a rubber band stretched to its limit before breaking.

"Please tell me, Link. Whatever it is, perhaps it will help if you tell me about it. Please don't shut me out!"

She half sat, half knelt on the floor, gazing up at his anguished face and not looking away for anything. She lost count of how many seconds, how many breaths went by before he finally parted his lips.

"I-I keep remembering…" he moaned. "…I was alone… I thought I was…going to die… I thought I wouldn't ever see you again… I was so close to giving in!"

Once he was started, he couldn't stop. The tears flowed freely as he aired his fears, his voice sounding cracked and broken. All she could do was listen and hold his hands. She cried too, because he was so shaken and she didn't know what to do for him.

"It's all right. It's all over," she whispered, wishing she had better words to help heal him. "I'm here. We're together again. Nothing's going to separate us again."

Afterward, he was exhausted and a bit gruff when she insisted that he drink the weak soup she'd brought up. But when she looked into his eyes and glimpsed the gratitude therein, she felt pretty sure she'd done the right thing. It was difficult for him to admit that he needed help and comfort, that the experience still haunted him and gave him nightmares, and that he was ashamed for feeling so vulnerable. He was worn out, and as soon as he'd finished slurping the soup, he crawled into bed and took a nap, as if he was just five years old.

Telma called a couple of times and asked how the young fellow was doing. Zelda spoke to her on both occasions and thanked her warmly and repeatedly for all the help both she and her friends had provided. Without them, Zelda was afraid that she wouldn't have seen Link again. Telma merely chuckled and the young lady could hear her smile through the telephone wires.

"Once that young man of yours is well again, I want to meet him properly. Come down sometime and we'll have a nice little party in my back room. The others would like to see him, too."

"Thank you!" Zelda replied, grateful tears springing to her eyes. "We will be sure to pay you a visit."

A couple of days after Link's return, the family decided to open up the rest of the Christmas presents. Aryll's parents were still there and they joined in the festivities as well. This time, Zelda felt complete and she couldn't stop smiling as she glanced over at Link and grabbed his hand yet again. She'd just unwrapped the gift he'd picked out for her and she was exulting over how gorgeous it was. It was a brooch depicting a loftwing with its head held up and its great wings folded partway down. It was a valuable piece, as he had been giving up little personal luxuries and saving his money for many months so that he could afford it.

"Link, it's just wonderful!" she exclaimed, a pink hue in her cheeks and a light in her turquoise eyes. After admiring it and thanking him more than once, she pinned it near her collar where the crimson of the loftwing contrasted prettily against the kelly green of her dress.

She'd finally decided on a gift for him too, but she didn't think it was nearly good enough, especially after his. It was a thin package that she handed him, just the right size for a painting. She held her breath and watched his face closely while he peeled back the paper. The expression on his face suddenly told her that she couldn't have picked anything better.

He held the canvas in his hands like it was a portrait made of gold. She had been in such a rush that she hadn't had time to find a proper frame for it. Her painting skills were rusty, but when she hadn't been with him, she'd used all her time to paint a picture of his grandmother, using the photograph he'd tracked down for Aryll as her inspiration. When she looked at her work, she saw all the mistakes and the areas at which she should have used more paint, or a different color. When he gazed upon it, he saw his beloved grandma as seen through the eyes of his dearest friend, and his heart was full.

"I know it's not too great. I could have done a much better job if I'd spent a longer time on it," she said awkwardly, wondering why he didn't say anything.

He met her eye for a moment. "It's perfect…just the way it is," he murmured, his voice strangely husky. "Thank you, Zelda…"

She noticed later that he placed the painting on his dresser, in a spot where he could see it from just about any position in the room. She tried to see it like he did, but she always got stuck on the imperfections. She wouldn't ask him to take it down for all the world, however, as she knew how much it meant to him.

Zelda always felt a little sad once all the Christmas gifts were opened and none remained under the tree. Ever since she was a child she'd always liked that time when she would look at the presents, and speculate and dream about what might be in them. It was almost as much fun as opening them and had endless potential before the paper was torn away. Each gift was a surprise for someone, and she always thought it was a shame when none of them were left. There was, however, one surprise left.

Just a day later, she went racing up to Link's room and found him playing slapjack with Aryll and the boys. They were all so focused on the game that no one was paying attention to her, so she put her hand on the cards in play and they were forced to notice her then.

"Zellie, what are you doing?!" Joel howled.

"Hey, that's not fair! I was gonna slap that jack!" Zill cried, adding his own lamentation.

"What is it?" Aryll questioned, noting her friend's flushed appearance.

Zelda had eyes for none but Link, however. He sat in the armchair with the fewest cards left in his pile, for he was almost always too slow in slapping the jacks. He returned her gaze and raised his eyebrows quizzically.

She gasped a couple of hasty breaths. "Link, do you remember when you told me about the first robbery at the store, and later that there was a reward? And I said it would be wonderful if you could collect it?"

Joel and Zill complained and protested again about her disturbing their game, but she shushed them. Link stared back at her, his eyebrows lowered and his mouth curved downward in some confusion.

"You don't mean…?" said Aryll, her eyes growing wide as she began to catch on.

"What?" Zill piped up.

"Yeah, what?" Joel echoed, not to be outdone by his brother.

She ignored them, her eyes elsewhere. "You _have_ earned the reward, Link! Detective Zauz called and he said it was only fair that it should go to you…after everything…and because you were holding a gun on those men, the police were able to capture them without firing a shot. It's yours! It's all yours, Link! Isn't that wonderful?!"

He still didn't say anything, but the boys made up for that by throwing their cards into the air, and shouting and hollering loud enough to be heard clear out to the sidewalk. The other three glared at them, but Zill and Joel just grinned back like the miscreants they were.

"Are you rich now, Link?"

"Can you buy us some comic books?"

"I want the new one on Captain FD! It just came out and I heard it's a pip!"

"And I want the Atomic Minish! I missed the last one, so now I'll have two new ones!"

"Be quiet, you two!" Zelda commanded them. "Hush, or you'll have to go back to your room."

Aryll was beaming and almost crying, she was so glad to hear of the good turn in her brother's fortune. "Oh Zelda! Oh, Link, it's wonderful! But are you sure?"

The elder girl nodded. "I talked to Mr. Shad as well. He assured me that the reward will definitely go to you, Link."

The young man sat there as if he was stunned almost into paralysis. His hands hung limply over his knees, as he'd already let his cards fall back to the table. At first he stared unfocused at the scattered mess of cards at the center, but then he slowly lifted his eyes to meet Zelda's.

"…I don't know if I want it," he mumbled. "It doesn't seem right…"

"But, Link! It's yours!" she returned, and she pressed at his not quite closed hand. "You deserve a reward after everything you've been through! But don't worry, you'll have plenty of time to get used to the idea. Mr. Shad said that it'll take a while before they'll pay it. The police must go through the goods and money they recovered, and return it to the rightful owners. When they get everything back, Mr. Shad says then the reward will be yours. And if you're not sure what to do with it, you can always put it away for a while. Or, better yet, you can make it work for you. Dad could find some worthwhile venture for you to invest in, I'm sure."

He hardly mentioned the reward after that, but he didn't refuse it either. It took him a while to accustom himself to the idea, and he determined that he would find some worthwhile purpose for which he might eventually use the money.

Link was slowly getting his strength back. He returned to see the doctor, who examined him and told him he was progressing nicely and warned him about what he should and should not eat just yet. After the new year he felt well enough to accompany Zelda to the Maple Home for Children and perform in a play that was long overdue. Aryll, Joel and Zill came too, for none of them wanted to miss it either. Even Saria was there, at Zelda's invitation.

The little ones all cheered to see them, gathering around Link and Zelda and hardly letting them move, and the older children who were assisting with the performance were bustlingly busy backstage. Mrs. Banji had to pull the youngsters away so that the two volunteer actors could put on their costumes.

While they were waiting in the wings, Zelda watched her friend, and smiled to herself because he was hardly scowling and seemed to be enjoying himself. Then he put on the monster's mask and his face was hidden from her, but even with his affected growls and the bad-natured actions of his role, she had the distinct feeling that he was as glad to be there as she was. Her own heart lifted and soared, and she had no difficulty in playing her own role as the benevolent Miss Holly. Her reprimands to the monster were firm but kind, and he was so sorry that he decided to change his ways. Once his heart was free from the malice and misery he'd tried to spread, his whole appearance transformed as well. Link appeared with his own face at the end of the play and promised Miss Holly he would build her a castle in the sky. They were riding off together in the sleigh, with its bells jangling at its sides, as the curtain fell.

The children clapped, cheered, yelled, and jumped to their feet. They'd laughed and screamed hardest when Link was his growling, snarling monster-best, and they were so pleased with the performance that they tried to swarm the stage and get closer to the performers. Chaos abounded, until Mrs. Banji and the other adults calmed things down and told them all to go to the big dining room and have their little after-play party.

Some of the children insisted that Link and Zelda should continue wearing their costumes, to which Zelda complied gladly and Link with a little reluctance. However, he quit protesting when he found out he didn't have to wear the monster's mask. As they enjoyed the refreshments the staff of the home had so thoughtfully prepared, he kept glancing at her with a particular, rather intense, almost yearning look. She was determined this time to ask him what he was thinking, but she knew a noisy room crowded with children wasn't quite the place to do it.

After the celebration was over, they returned their costumes backstage, where some of the older children had begun putting things away. Zelda began folding up one of the makeshift curtains, and Link, seeing her example, helped one of the boys push a large piece of scenery. Mrs. Banji approached and clucked, telling them they'd done enough.

"Thank you for making the play something special for the children," she said warmly. "You might not know how much it means to them…but I just want to let you know that it does. They loved it."

"We were glad to do it," Zelda replied, her own easy smile mirroring the elder lady's.

"But you should go home now. Leave that to the children. They know how to do it. Thank you again for everything… and I'm very happy to see you both here." Mrs. Banji was looking straight at Link.

He mumbled something in return and they bid the kindly lady farewell. He held Zelda's coat for her and donned his own. Then she was distracted by a child who came up to her, hugged her fiercely and didn't want her to leave. Link was about to huff a sigh of impatience when he felt a tug at his sleeve. Upon glancing down, he saw Saria, and the grumpy twist of his lips eased up into a near-smile as he greeted her.

"I really liked the play," she said softly.

He knelt down to her level and his smile widened slightly. "That's good. I'm glad you liked it. And thank you for the soup you brought me."

She smiled sweetly. "I helped my mother make it. Was it good?"

"Best soup I ever had," he declared with a nod.

She grinned proudly. "I liked doing it. Maybe I'll be a cook when I grow up!"

"You could always count on me for a customer, then."

She shifted her gloved hands and fiddled with the little bag she carried. "Mr. Link…" she began, and then faltered.

"Yes, Saria?"

"Mr. Link, are you…" She fidgeted some more. "…Are you going to marry Miss Zelda?"

His eyes went wide and his throat bobbed. It was a full minute before he could trust himself to speak. "Wh-why do y-you ask?"

"You like her, right? I think she likes you," the girl told him. She seemed to gain courage the more she said. "I-I wanted to marry you, but Mummy says I'd have to wait years and years 'til I'm grown up enough to marry. I think… I think you should marry Miss Zelda. She likes you."

Link knew his mouth was open, but he didn't bother to close it. He stared back at Saria, wondering how the little girl's words had hit the very center of the deepest part of his recent thoughts, truer than the bullet of the best marksman. He stammered something incoherent, but then Saria's mother called to her, she bid him a quick goodbye, kissed him on the cheek and left him there. He stood up slowly, his head spinning again.

Aryll had already offered to take Joel and Zill home just a little while earlier, and Zelda was secretly glad. Link hailed a cab and moments later they were both huddled in the backseat. With the coming of night they seemed to be wrapped up in a blanket of snow and muted city lights, just the two of them.

"What were you thinking earlier, Link? You kept looking at me like you'd never seen me in a red dress before."

He licked his lips, swallowed several times and tugged at his collar. His heart was in his shoes, then then jumped up to his throat. Finally he spoke, fixing her with such an intense look that she was startled at first. "I w-was thinking… that you look beautiful. Y-you always look beautiful…especially when you smile. I hope you'll always smile… and I will try to smile with you."

She felt a movement and glanced down automatically, her own heart giving a fantastic leap. He was holding her hand.

~ Fin ~

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_I realized recently that I seem to have collected a bunch of names that start with Z. First of all, there's the most important character of all, Zelda. Then there's her brother, Zill, the detective, Zauz, the family's chef, Zunari, and of course, one of the villains, Zant. It's kinda funny that it worked out that way, but I certainly didn't make a conscious decision to specifically use all the Z names I could. Say, there are a few others I didn't use though, being Zubora and Zanc, plus some NPCs from Breath of the Wild. _

_There are also a number of redheaded characters that I used, but that just turned out that way too. It was a matter of trying to find a character who fit the role I had in mind. Can you remember all the redheads?_

_This story became a monster! Have you ever seen a cartoon or illustrated story in which a room is filled with dough or some other gooey substance, to the point that it bulges out the doors and windows and keeps going? The prequel, _Christmas After All_, was going to be a oneshot, but by the time I had it all written down, it was 25,000 words and much too long for that. So I broke it up into the eight chapters in which you can now find it. When beginning this story, I figured I'd be doing pretty well to have about ten chapters, probably about the length of the first two or three. And now it's ended up being _four _times as long as the previous story. _

_I've had a love/hate relationship with this story. I've been working on it for about three months, and at least a month when I first began writing it. I don't remember how many nights I sat down at my computer after a stupidly busy day and tried to plug away at this thing. There were times when I felt like chucking the whole thing out and forgetting about it. Yes, I hated it and wondered what possessed me to write the stupid thing! Other times I was fairly well pleased with it and grinned to myself after coming up with something I liked. Seeing your feedback and theories was truly rewarding. What else can I say but that it has its ups and downs, and that writing is a struggle? Those of you who are writers surely know of which I speak._

_I'm glad it's done! My brain feels like mush left out to harden for a few months. But I am satisfied to reach such a conclusion to this particular tale. Who knows... Maybe one day I'll write more about these characters. But for now I need a much-overdue break...and the chance to catch up on some other stuff!_

_Until we meet again..._

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01-17-2020 ~ Published (11,522 words)


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